QUINTUS

by Kevin Carey

G21 Staff Writer

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Kevin Carey

In his piece to celebrate the 300th Edition of g21, KEVIN CAREY says its heterodox position makes a valuable contribution to the democratic process but there still needs to be a fundamental adjustment of the balance of power between the media and elected politicians, in favour of the politicians.

SUSSEX, ENGLAND - There is only one respect in which Anthony Trollope is not the best writer there has ever been on the politics of the limited franchise and that is his depiction of the eponymous Phineas Finn who could not possibly combine his high principles with his high office for so long. In every other respect, however, the territory he covers is as recognisable now, in spite of the expansion of the franchise, as it was then to such an extent that he has defined for us in Britain what we think of as our 'Golden age' of democratic politics.

Then, Disraeli and Gladstone were respectful but robust, there was honour amongst Ministers and independence of mind on the part of legislators. It was the universal franchise, according to this way of looking at things (I eschew the word "thinking") which led to the steady decline of our democracies into demagoguery. Nonetheless, a close reading of Trollope will demonstrate the power of the fixers, the Rattlers (whips) and Robys (patronage), the importance of wealth and flattery in the person of Lady Glencora Palliser and the utter humbug of much that passes for policy-making in the curious episode where Mr. Daubeney remains Conservative Prime Minister by simply adopting the major policy of his Liberal opponents, the disestablishment of the Church of England.

No less acute is Trollope's depiction of the role of the press. It might have started with the sole purpose of providing mercantile information which could be relied upon but it soon descended into that state we now recognise everywhere except in the pages of the Wall Street Journal and The Financial Times which have presumably calculated that they make more money by telling the truth than by telling lies. Mr. Quintus Slide gives place to none of his successors in his ability to clothe the retailing of salacious gossip in the cloak of righteousness, deliberately confusing public interest with that which interests the public.

Perhaps Trollope's abiding power over the reader lies not only in his depiction of a world against which we have come to judge much of our subsequent political conduct but also because it has the attraction for the intellectual of being arcane. There is a certain amount of surface pleasure that can be gained from the plots but, as in the sonata form in music, the real beauty is in understanding the contrasting themes, their interplay and working out. In their much less picturesque and panoramic way than in Tolstoy they show the playing out of private concerns against a background of public affairs.

For reasons which are immensely complex, these two streams of activity seem to have radically bifurcated in literature since Proust, Musil and Krauss, with the honourable exception of Tom Wolfe whose Bonfire of the Vanities is a perfect example of the two strands simultaneously in play though, significantly in the key areas of finance and the law, rather than in the arena of Washington politics. Wolfe's contention, in one of the most powerful literary conceits of the 20th Century, was that your life could be utterly changed by missing your exit on the freeway and turning off one later. This is a more powerful statement on the distribution of income and wealth than the combined forces of the Ivy League in the whole of the Century, Rawls and Dworkin included.

Nonetheless, in spite of such honourable exceptions as there are, we are rapidly losing the link between private and public conduct.

We affect a cynical disjuncture between the acts of our politicians and our own lives, pretending to believe that the venality of politicians is not a reflection of our own conduct but, rather, a terrible aberration from our wonted generosity; never let it be said that it is our selfishness which drives elected politicians to the edge of -- and often over -- the precipice from honour into shame.

There is a practical test for such a situation which I have used before; by whom would you wish to be ruled on your desert island, a collective of small shopkeepers or a cross party gaggle drawn by lot from the Senate?

I would choose the Senators over the shopkeepers every time.

The reason, then, why I think that many of us have lost an interest in public affairs is not because the politicians are too venal for our delicate stomachs but because they are not partial enough in our direction; they are not venal enough.

We therefore, through the media, celebrate every misdemeanour, error, peccadillo, dishonesty and infelicity we can find. When they agree with each other they are automata, when they disagree they are factions splitting their party asunder or, at an individual level an honourable dissenter becomes a maverick whereas those who are loyal are simply characterised as "lobby fodder".

None of this is particularly new. As fear of nuclear war declined in the late 1960s and into the early 1970s we lost the taste for a strong public sector and concomitant high taxation and our political leaders gave authoritative public voice to our private greed. What has changed, however, is the balance between the actors and the spectators. The key difference between the worlds of Trollope and Wolfe is that in the former Quintus Slide the editor of the People's Banner, for all his self-advertising, was a lesser figure than was the Duke of Omnium as Prime Minister, whereas in the latter case none of the actors is as important as the journalists.

In the last two decades the pressure of 7/24 journalism have completely altered our 19th Century political settlements, rendering them worse than useless. With our collective connivance, elected politicians have become the playthings of profit-centred TV producers.

J.K. Galbraith saw it all; in a society where the majority is well-off it will want the whole state to be organised in favour of the well-off. All that our politicians will do is to take our money and give it to the feckless. If they have any role at all it is simply to arrange matters so much better in favour of the rich than they would be settled in a political vacuum. In other words, we must enjoy our wealth without having to organise a rota of boots to be trampled upon the heads of the poor; let the government do that with what niggardly taxation we must concede. this is, incidentally, not a conspiracy, it is a concordat. Our broad, middle class consensus fits nicely with the economic interests of media owners. Plutocrats and the bourgeoisie will concede to each other what they must and, combined, they will concede to the state what they must; we are in the realm of Nozik's "Night watchman State".

Although the events of 9/11 might change our attitude to the state and to injustice, though I see no real signs of either, and although there is always room for improvement in the behaviour of each of us, not least politicians, the central problem in the imbalance is the failure to recognise that the media, as reporters of activities subject to democratic mandate, are not a part of the written Constitution of the United States nor of the unwritten constitution of the United Kingdom but are simply economic entities attempting to maximise their profits.

Some, as I have said, calculate that their best economic interest lies in being truthful. No investor is going to trust a medium which lies about the closing figure of the Dow Jones Index! Yet inasmuch as my power to exercise my democratic duty relies almost entirely upon intermediaries I must be concerned about the integrity of those intermediaries, particularly when they are in a power struggle with politicians which naturally induces them to belittle politicians in any way possible.

The traditional, free market response to these concerns has been plurality, the retention of a variety of outputs with different views and interests. This has always -- begging the pardon of such a heterodox publication as G21 itself -- been a very silly argument.

If a variety of different media all distort a politician's statement to suit their peculiar agendas I am no nearer to knowing what the politician actually said.

Everyone would also agree that in spite of the huge number of media outputs there are massive pieces of democratic business that go completely unreported. Woe betide the Executive or legislature that deals with a major piece of business that happens to coincide, say, with the O.J Simpson trial. The former might be a matter of extreme public importance affecting millions of lives as, say, pensions reform, whereas the trial is only of direct concern to the prosecution, defence and jurors acting on our behalf; it may be of interest to the public but is hardly a matter of public interest.

Besides, the variety of outputs actually hides a cartel; and in a cartel where audience figures and advertising revenue are crucial, the elements sink to the lowest common denominator. What is regarded as beyond the pale on a Monday is brought within it by a single medium on Tuesday and is common practice by Friday. By Saturday we are all wondering how we can have been so stupid or prudish as to have thought our novelty ever to have been injurious. And so the media quickly justifies prurience, trivialisation, speculation and even downright falsehood, this last in the firm knowledge that most politicians simply dare not defend themselves at law. As with the depiction of copulation, so with legislation; the parallels between the growth of pornography and the coverage of politics in the media are astonishingly symmetrical.

And so, you will gather, I am not particularly attracted by plurality as a mechanism for maintaining integrity.

Another possible remedy is the strengthening of the role of public broadcasting. this is possible but by no means simple. The United States system has always been too feeble in the market to be a yardstick; indeed, it has been allowed to survive in order to legitimise the excesses of the commercial sector which, when faced with criticism that it is far too commercial and brash, points reverently to public broadcasting to meet the general deficiency.

In much of continental Europe public broadcasting has been far too tied to government and has often rightly been seen as the official mouthpiece and, on that basis, largely discounted by opponents and sceptics alike. Even the globally revered BBC has tended over the past twenty years to follow its commercial rivals down market. You can safely put any amount of money you like on the BBC not daring to ignore the news agenda of its competitors. if there is to be a major division in Parliament on pensions legislation which will affect the lives of millions for the next half century and a 'scandal' over an athlete's misdemeanour, even the BBC cannot bring itself to put the first before the second.

And so, although the improvement in the means and power of public broadcasting is a fine idea in theory it is difficult to strike a balance between freedom and control.

Furthermore, you cannot make indifferent citizens watch improving television. We have the largest and still increasing university graduate populations in our history and we are still addicted to trash. The physical parallel to this state of mind, so alien to the European temperament as to be incomprehensible, is that of the millionaire eating junk food. How can it be that as we become ever better educated we add CNN to Coca Cola and Macdonalds and think we are leading a full life?

Thus, in an era where it ought to prosper, public television languishes. It is precisely this logic of outcome which leads me to believe that the elimination of the intermediary process will not fare as well as Internet gurus expect. Governments will soon be able to post every piece of legislation and propaganda on official web sites and instead of relying upon the media for a distillation of what has been said, we will be able to see the text, the whole text, and nothing but the text, so help me. Yet it is hardly likely that those who cannot bring themselves to switch to public broadcasting will want to (the word can't be "surf" in this context) search the Internet in order to find the key clause of a Bill currently in Committee in the Senate.

If anything, I think that the Internet is likely to lead to an increase in the power of intermediaries.

Here is a scenario. A democratically elected Government Minister from the United Kingdom or a US Senator -- it hardly matters in this context -- is seen in a hotel lobby late one night with a leading figure let us say from the United Arab Emirates. Unable to explain the sighting, a 'stringer' files a short despatch to his London office which says so-and-so has been seen in "under cover" discussions with so-and-so. This person is 'thought' by the sub editors on the night shift to have been entangled at some previous date with, as it turns out, quite legitimate, armaments deals. So the headline reads: "MINISTER IN SECRET ARMS DEAL", with the gratuitous but tasty second deck: "Kickback Suspected".

The breakfast show editors who always read their newspapers before deciding the agenda, cannot resist this story and run it for all it is worth. By this time the headline runs: "Minister Suspected of Kick Back in Secret Arms Deal", a subtle but important difference. But here is the power of the Internet. The announcer encourages people to use their PDAs, laptops, 3g phones, PCs both to e-mail his station and the Prime Minister's Office calling for the Minister's resignation. By lunch time the Minister has put out a short statement explaining that he was on official government business to supply arms to the Emirates in exchange for support in the "War against terrorism" and that neither party has paid any "kickback" money to the other; but by that time it is too late. There are several million messages calling for the resignation.

At that rate we could have a Minister (or senator) a week, chosen in advance by the inner corps of the media to provide them and us with entertainment.

Matters have now come to such a head that there needs to be a serious constitutional debate about the nature of free speech and its relationship with participative rights in a democratic society. Until now these two rights have seemed to be symbiotic but I maintain that they are now in direct conflict. The argument is as necessary in Europe as it is in the United States but I wish to confine myself to the latter because of its written Constitution, together with its Amendments and the succession of Supreme Court interpretation of its meaning and purposes in the contemporary world.

Let me admit that, where the Constitution is concerned, I take the fundamentalist, literalist interpretative position to be absurd, as do most liberals. I take the original document and its subsequent amendments to be matters of 'high level' principle which can be contemporaneously illuminated by the Supreme Court and the legislature. I therefore take it that when the Founding Fathers and those who drafted the First Amendment were concerned with the equality of access to freedom of speech they would have been aware of the relatively small time printing and publishing of books, pamphlets and daily news sheets but they cannot have imagined the growth of major network television nor of such networks being owned and operated by a non-citizen devising masses of editorial content for his own commercial advantage.

We must acknowledge in such a discussion that there is a massive inequality in the effectiveness of our access to freedom of speech.

There is no way in which a private citizen can have such an effect on society as a television network not least because, in spite of the plurality of outputs and the existence of the Internet as a provider of unmediated original content, the individual relies upon such networks as mediators between himself and the public he seeks to address on major issues. In other words, we might all be equal in the bar or at the town meeting but we are not all equal in terms of major political discussion carried out at the national level. Perhaps we were never meant to be. Certainly the Founding Fathers understood to a nicety differences of rank and degree and erected the Electoral College to frustrate the direct democracy they abhorred. And yet, the distinctions they made concerned competence not class, disinterestedness, not profit. They thought, and the records are clear on this, that poor people would not be as likely as themselves to bear in mind the common good but would be more likely to pursue their own particular, private interests.

Patrician though this might be, there was some underlying sense in it. Yet I do not see how they can have meant that politics was to be totally controlled by the richest people in the United States in alliance with massive broadcasting networks and without any reference to the ballot box.

That, in a nutshell, is where we are now with the Bush Administration, beholden to its electoral backers and reported on by a sedulous, tub thumping media cartel. That media cartel might be correct in supporting the Administration's 'War against terrorism' but that is simply a happy accident; it might equally be wrong.

It is therefore important that our fine legal minds, such as Ronald Dworkin, and John Rawls should move their focus away from the kind of matters which are governed by the principle of free speech (pornography, racism, sexism) to the limits of the exercise of the power of free speech, particularly for commercial purposes. This is not a wholly new area of study because its great precedent was the notion of state interference in the theoretical right to economic self-determinism as expressed in our system of taxation.

At the end of the 19th Century there was a widespread belief amongst the industrial magnates that taxation, other than for the purposes of defence and war, was unconstitutional. We are facing the same argument now in respect of freedom of speech. Most people, but particularly those who make their livelihoods from the media, assume that it should have no limits. I maintain that position to be untenable because, just as equal citizenship cannot contemplate abject poverty and therefore causes taxes to be raised, so equality in freedom of speech cannot contemplate that speech being denied to elected representatives on whose performance we make judgments when we vote. Just as my right to live a decent and dignified life over-rides your right to untrammelled economic freedom, so my right to hear must over-ride your right to be heard on whatever terms you dictate.

The reason why this argument is so difficult is that the theoretical plurality of media output and access obscures the reality. Just as the poor have always been theoretically entitled to enter the portals of the finest hotel, so we are all free, at a theoretical level, to access whatever medium we like, including inventories of original source material not tampered with by global media intermediaries with their own agendas.

There is, too, another factor of great consequence. The media are now so powerful that it would be an act of martyrdom for any politician to propose and prosecute what I suggest. Were anyone to raise his head above the parapet he would immediately be accused of McCarthyism.

So, have we reached a democratic end game where the media is now so powerful, so superior to elected politicians in power and influence, that there is no route out? Well, almost.

G21 provides a certain amount of yeast in the body politic and there will always be heterodox publishing but we are long past the age when such unconventionality was part of the mainstream, where any medium might comfortably depict two or three different and powerful opinions. News as entertainment requires violence of argument, encapsulation and entrapment. If journalism is the fourth estate in any sense the other three are not the executive, legislature and judiciary but pornography, advertising and celebrity.

We would, as with all matters, be better off discussing these issues before they come to a head but this is highly unlikely. Most of us only discuss our flawed relationships when we are faced with a crisis rather than in the calm of a holiday break. The crunch will come when politicians, robbed of democratic legitimacy by falling electoral turnout, come face to face with mass media with the legitimacy of their audience figures refusing at last to give any coverage at all to political affairs. This will not be a long time coming and the best suggestion I can make is that the FCC gets ready. This is not an impossible remit.

If the Federal Reserve, whose decisions affect the life of every American citizen (not to mention most of the rest of us) can be held in such high regard then a similar structure to guarantee the integrity of our access to information ought to be able to command the same kind of respect. This will not be easy but, then, the history of the Federal Reserve has been fraught with controversy; it was not always the benign and Olympian abode of Messrs. Volker and Greenspan.

The alternative is too depressing to contemplate at any great length.

Ever since its foundation, the United States has only ever been reluctantly governable. Economic depressions and major wars have, of necessity, strengthened government but it has been steadily weakening for the past half century and, in spite of 9/11, will continue to do so. It has every chance of becoming the first post-political society and although Europe has much stronger adherence to political governance it cannot resist the trend. The world has seen many powerful , largely benign, oligarchies presiding over long periods of prosperity; but is that what we really want? If not, we must begin to see that the media is an enemy of democracy and not its friend.

KEVIN CAREY is social entrepreneur, economist and Director of the UK's humanITy. He can be reached via e-mail at "humanity@atlas.co.uk".

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