MAIN EVENT. A Good Place to Get Started --- a.k.a "Table of Contents"

Kennedy

by Kevin Carey

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KEVIN CAREY sees the death of John Kennedy Jr. through the eyes of all-news television.

Stranded in the sleeplessness of a different time zone in a hotel in a science park near Nice without room service, bereft of all other diversion, I resorted in desperation to round-the-clock television news. It didn't matter which channel because an apparently decent, modestly successful publisher, his wife and her sister had plunged from the sky into the sea off Martha's Vineyard. The son of a President murdered in less than straightforward circumstances had died in a slightly mysterious manner. Whether it was the weather or inexperience was a trivial puzzle compared with the possibility that the most powerful man in the world had been murdered with the connivance of his own security services.

In one sense this was news television at its best, live, current, continuous - it would have swung effortlessly into overdrive on that day in Dallas in 1963 - but in spite of all its best, professional efforts, this brief chapter in an uncannily tragic family saga did not amount to much. Inevitably President Clinton led the tributes, elder statesmen were wheeled out, messages on the door of the family home were lingered over but after ten minutes one wondered what would have been on screen had that little plane not crashed. Attention drifted to the running sores of crises that burst over our screens like abscesses and then subside into septic oblivion: the perilous state of Montenegro; the tangled remains of Southern Lebanon; the mangled scrub that passes for the sovereign state of Sierra Leone; the criminally ignored knot of conflict which stretches from Uganda to the borders of South Africa. One might even have hoped for some intelligent analysis of domestic politics.

There was slightly, only slightly, more of an excuse at the death of Princess Diana; she was, after all, a high profile public figure and mother of the heir to her country's throne. In the toy-town, heritage park that is England the blanket coverage made a kind of sense but comparing the Kennedys to the Windsors is the kind of gratuitous and glitzy nonsense that ought to be confined to glossy 'style' magazines. Whereas English republicanism is not much more fierce than its monarchism there is a hefty slice of America that would murder the whole Massachusetts clan and think that by doing so it had served the Republic. I vaguely remember being similarly trapped by a monsoon in a Bangkok hotel and watching hour upon hour of Kennedy bashing over some alleged sexual misconduct. When we reach the stage - as we have in much of our tabloid press - where public figures are deliberately raised to be as deliberately laid low then the admittedly ever flimsier barrier between news and entertainment has been definitely crossed. What I was watching was soap opera in the guise of news.

We should not wonder at this; it is a fine piece of deception to establish wall-to-wall global graffiti and present it as public-spirited public broadcasting when its primary purpose is to set an agenda which avoids asking difficult questions about global companies. If Rupert Murdoch and Ted Turner don't think that tax avoidance is an issue then it isn't one. There is a minuscule readership for newspapers and journals with a different, more public spirited agenda but their proportionate, balanced, self-disciplined, literate pronouncements are drowned in the perpetual background cacophony of exaggerated, partial, self-indulgent, semi-literate whining and sneering. It is always as well to be wary of people who never stop smiling, it means that their facial expression is unchanged when they put the boot in.

None of the coverage, it must be said, was particularly violent in the case of the Kennedy death, it was a drip-feed of adulation and innuendo administered by a nurse saying that it would not hurt and it would do us good. What shocks on reflection is the contrast between the apparent blandness and the insidious nastiness of the never-ending headline.

There is, however, more to it than the commercial interests of media moguls. We are not living in a post historical age but we are rapidly moving into a post party political age. The era of the cheap jibe and the legislative tussle is passing away: America is in legislative grid-lock on every issue that counts in traditional politics; European legislatures are withering on the vine; and new democracies somehow never seem to mature. As long as politicians veered between the witty and the scurrilous we were happy to enjoy the contest, knowing as we did that the real business was being carried on in committee rooms and government Departments; but as substance has ebbed from legislators these contests lose their savour.

What we are now faced with is a host of complex ethical and scientific issues which do not lend themselves to the dogmatic partisanship of economic management, taxation and the benefits system. Instead we are faced with the life and death issues of abortion and euthanasia, the confrontation between agribusiness and consumers, the ethics of over-riding national sovereignty and the central problem of how to maintain democracy in a global economic context, subjects not suitable for the nightly news or even the 24-hour channels.

The small screen wants contrast and conflict but very few people can take unyielding, narrow positions on these big issues without sounding silly or mad. Scientists don't speak fast enough, theologians have too many subordinate clauses, economists are confusingly disparate and democracy as an issue of political theory is boring. This shifty, messy, kaleidoscope of nuance was acceptable in the days when the Ivy League and Oxbridge ran broadcasting, public and private, for their own rarefied amusement. The elite administered society for the benefit of the elite, so now, not surprisingly, the market is running the same enterprises for the benefit of the market and it ill behoves the erstwhile grandees to cry "foul!". Instead of weeping into their Grand Cru they should consider growing a niche market in serious digital public affairs. We may not need it quite yet but as the damage to public broadcasting on both sides of the Atlantic is irreparable, we shall have to make a new start.


KEVIN CAREY is a writer, broadcaster and social entrepreneur. His interests range from the relationship between information technology and social exclusion and the symphonies of Gustav Mahler. He is the director of a UK charity, HumanITy, which combines rigorous social analysis with experimental field projects on learning IT skills through content creation. Educated at Cambridge and Harvard before a spell at the BBC, followed by 15 years in Third World Development, Carey offers a unique perspective on world affairs. He is a politcal theorist, moral philosopher, classical music critic and published poet.

Kevin Carey can be reached via e-mail at "humanity@atlas.co.uk".

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