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The great British public likes politicians almost as little as it likes journalists. It assumes that we each pee in each other`s pockets and serve each other`s purposes in a conspiracy against the people, though one in which the journalists give them more reliable information than we do.
In reality Journos and Pols, here as everywhere else, have a love-hate relationship which lacks love. Mistrust is too soft a word for it, mutual loathing too strong. We need each other. We`re much the same sort of people (egomaniacs with a rat-like cunning) but we`re bound together in a marriage without love.
In this marriage the journalists are the dominant partner. No man cometh to the people except through them because the media have their ear. We don`t so we need journalists to reach the people. They need us to dignify their stories with parliamentary questions, concerns and debates but not so much as generators of news. No-one`s particularly interested in what we do, unless it`s sexy or corrupt, though to a limited degree we`ve become specimens under the media microscopes.
So in an age when no-one attends political meetings, a few thousand watch or read Parliament, political interest is low, and the political class tatty and mistrusted, we are reduced to the status of publicity seekers clamouring to get into the media, but without the advantage of being celebrities or having Jordan`s boobs. They are the masters now. They control access. We are their clamorous dependents.
Parliament`s power is based on publicity and the ability to ventilate issues. Yet it`s little use raising an issue, pushing a policy there or promoting a private bill or an adjournment debate unless it gets support and interest from the media. If it does Ministers, ever fearful of the media and the public they influence, listen. To the media not to us. If it doesn`t it`s dead. The dull and deep potations of parliamentary pedantry still satisfy some MPs. Others accumulate enormous dignity and avoirdupois, though, in fact, they might as well dig allotments for all they can achieve without media interest. Most just resent their dependence in that dull, deep vallium way in which Parliamentary sentiments are felt, while the media genic and the rising stars are viewed with concealed jealousy. As Nick Brown once told BBC regional producers in Newcastle, “People like Austin Mitchell should decide whether they`re in Parliament or showbusiness”.
Journos and Pols face different challenges. Politics is like surfing: seize the moment as Blair does, then tack to achieve. Journalism is more dogged, less dependent on luck, and more on hard intellectual effort. We pretend to run the country but, in fact, the media have the real power. Indeed, they threaten to put us out of work by taking over the functions of Parliament. We used to reach the people. Now they do. We used to voice popular demands. Now they do. We used to express their views. Now they do, particularly through the polls which read our constituents more accurately than we ever could. We used to control the executive. Now they do. Parliament used to be the platform for the opposition. Now they`re it. This shift in the balances has gone so far that journalists are developing delusions of grandeur, even of competence, as if they not only know everything better and are actually running the country. We`re envious and jealous. They`re condescending.
It`s career politics today and people climb by conforming. The days of rising by rebellion, like Macmillan and Cripps, are over. That`s the way out or a passage to the little pound of rent-a-gobs thrown crumbs and coverage by the media. These little groups and the media`s attacks are deeply resented by the loyal majority busy climbing ladders they feel the trouble makers, and the media, threaten.
All of which accounts for last week`s explosion of hatred against journalists, Gilligan, Today, Humphries, Paxperson and the entire BBC. After enduring years of being frustrated by the media, jealousy and resentments have both accumulated. No one real person or politician is ever satisfied or happy with their media experiences: they didn`t get enough space, their golden words were cut, their main point was missed, etc., etc. You name it, anyone who`s ever been interviewed or appeared on the electronic media feels that. We have it in spades, but boosted by the terms of our trade with the media.
We relate to the media mainly through the Parliamentary lobby, the best and brightest, most of them more able and bright than us, though not necessarily less prejudiced. They relate to politics not through us but through the Campbells, the Press Officers and the spin doctors. They`re better plugged into government than we are and much more essential to the system. They`re the players, we`re the spectators, the brute votes who do the dirty work. We have a ringside seat but they`re in the ring where we want to be. What`s worse, they know more than we do. We`re fed on selective government fact sheets. They get it straight from the horse`s mouth and are allowed to interpret it for themselves. Dammit, they even see more of our leaders than we do now that they`re too busy to come to Parliament much. Take the Blair Brown battle. They know exactly what`s going on. It`s all concealed from us.
The frustration and jealousy which build up from these resentments isn`t directed against local media which always treats us deferentially (too much so in fact) and is mostly happy to keep reminding our constituents that we`re still alive. The dislike focuses on the BBC which is too big and bureaucratic to ever be loved. It carries the pathetic remnants of political and enquiring programmes (which ignore us), the talk programmes we want to appear on but never do, and the stars, like Humphries and Paxperson, who twinkle so much more brightly than us.
All of which creates a syndrome and when something like Hutton or the War of Campbell`s Ego comes along it produces an explosion of bitterness. Now we have to row back from it because Labour supports the BBC and public service and always gives both a better deal than the Tories. So, shamefacedly, we must now assure the Corporation that we`ll keep the license fee, maintain its independence and, most of all, that it still matters, just like any exposed wound when it goes septic.
It`s easy to see why we hate the bastards. Less easy to understand why they`re so contemptuous of us. Weren`t we elected to run the country and support our party in a system of government by party? So it`s galling to find no-one much needs us. Not our leaders who foist policies on us which they know we`ll vote for to keep our jobs. Not the journos who have the entre to the top, the information, the influence, and the access to the people we don`t. Not even our constituents on the big issues when they turn to the media not us.
Some MPs don`t mind. They`re perfectly happy to act as over-paid party campaigners, amateur propagandists and unskilled social workers. Some are peeved because the media endangers their remorseless rise and the recognition of their uniqueness. Most just silently and jealously resent. Given an opportunity like last week that can suddenly explode. Mostly it just festers because we need the bastards so much. |
