Bubble politics spread lies about austerity. Hacks must get their feet dirty
There’s much talk of ‘post-truth politics’ as if it were the sole creation of social media and fake news websites.
This is misleading, because the mainstream media – and in particular the prominence given to Westminster correspondents – is itself partly to blame.
I’m prompted to say this by Tom Crewe’s superb account of the Tories destruction of local government.
Austerity is not merely an abstract policy, but causes real damage in the form of closures of libraries and Sure Start centres, cuts to bus routes and increased homelessness.
And to this we could add worse flood defences, less care for the elderly and disabled and increased likelihood of prison riots.
It’s in this context that Westminster political reporting is positively dangerous.
In presenting politics as a ‘he says, she says’ knockabout, the ground truth of real damage to real people is overlooked, and instead it becomes merely a matter of abstract debate.
George Osborne managed to present himself as being on the side of devolution because he talked so much about the ‘Northern powerhouse’. But the reality of big cuts to local government meant he was in fact a centralizer.
Post-truth Westminster correspondents who listened to words rather than looked at ground truth let him get away with this.
This trend, of course, contains a vicious class bias. ‘He says, she says’ reporting tends to be deferential towards those in power.
This isn’t just because they have better-resourced PR departments but also because, as Adam Smith said, there’s a ‘disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful’.
Such reporting also favours those with superficial charm and over-confidence – traits more likely to be possessed by men from rich backgrounds such as Cameron and Farage. And of course in giving a voice to Westminster politicians, the voices of people on the ground are not heard.
All of this is to support Paul Mason who says:
One of the most pitiful things about the political class…is their distance from the actual experience of work.
A media which paid more attention to the ground truth of workplace coercion, wage stagnation and casualization would give us a better understanding of strikes than “he says, she says” debates between partisans. But this is absent in post-truth reporting.
What I’m appealing for here is for journalists (and economists) to get their shoes dirty, to look for facts on the ground rather than quotes from ‘senior sources’ who are themselves often ignorant or careless of ground truth; in fairness, many do so – though I suspect these tend to the less well-paid reporters.
(I know, I risk the charge of ‘physician, heal thyself’ here. But I like to think that in my day job I don’t confuse getting a quote from a fund manager with pursuing the truth.)
It’s people like Kate Belgrave and projects likeMigrant Voice or Unpaid Britain we should listen to more than empty suits and gobshite columnists. Remember the original and correct meaning of Raymond Wolfinger’s words: ‘the plural of anecdote IS data.’
All of this, however, is a long way from a lot of the journalism we get.
Chris Dillow is an economist and blogs at Stumbling and Mumbling
See: Dear Sajid Javid: Here’s a draft ‘oath of allegiance’ to British values
6 Responses to “‘Post-truth’ is nothing new. We need reporters to cover working class realities”
David Lindsay
Fake news is of very real concern. There have been seven recessions in the United Kingdom since the Second World War. Five of them have been under Conservative Governments. That party has also presided over all four separate periods of Quarter on Quarter fall in growth during the 2010s. By contrast, there was no recession on the day of the 2010 General Election. And now, the Conservatives have more than doubled the National Debt. The Major Government also doubled the National Debt. Yet the Conservatives’ undeserved reputation for economic competence endures. They are subjected to absolutely no scrutiny by the fake news detractors of their opponents.
Other examples of fake news include the official versions of events in relation to Orgreave, Westland, and Hillsborough. All manner of claims made by, or in support of, the Clintons. The alleged murder of 100,000 military age males in Kosovo. The existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and their capacity for deployment within 45 minutes. Saddam Hussein’s feeding of people into a giant paper shredder, and his attempt to obtain uranium from Niger. An imminent genocide in Benghazi, Gaddafi’s feeding of Viagra to his soldiers in order to encourage mass rape, and his intention to flee to Venezuela. An Iranian nuclear weapons programme. And Assad’s gassing of Ghouta, as if that were an undisputed fact. In every case, that was fake news. Or, in plain English, lies.