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In a time when “public interest” translates to “what makes more money”… is there any way to fix the broken media of the UK?

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As predicted just a few days ago, the UK media has ignored the story about Tory MP candidate Phillippa Stroud and her church’s practice of performing exorcisms on homosexuals. This is, arguably, a story of at least equal significance to Bigotgate. And yet where is the outcry?

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Where are the condemnations? Recriminations? Removal from the party list? Is Stroud’s support evaporating as she becomes political anathema?

No, of course it bloody isn’t. And it was never going to, either.

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The Twits Have It
Check on Twitter and you’ll still see #PhillippaStroud trending. The Guardian and The Observer – the only major outlets to have reported the story – broke the news two days ago, and yet the hash-tag is still up there. Take a look at what people are tweeting and you’ll find a good 50% of tweets directed at the BBC, at Channel4, Sky, The Mail – anywhere and everywhere which claims to output “News” – and all of them asking why they were studiously ignoring Phillippa Stroud.

UPDATE: It appears I may have spoken too soon on the issue of Phillippa Stroud. A blog post is reporting that the BBC and Channel4 have both been gagged by a court-order from “high-up” in the Conservative Party. I’ll note that this is – currently – complete uncorroborated, but there may yet be hope for journalistic standards (if not the horrendous state of the UK’s libel laws which have allowed this to come to pass).

If I need to spell it out, the media of the UK has – for too long – worked towards its own interests and to hell with the public and their interests.

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The word spin was created to describe media-manipulating politicians. But those politicians, on all sides, were simply playing the media at its own game – attempting to level the playing field. Those who actually beat the media were granted the coveted title of “Spin Doctor” – an ingenious media-invention designed to make the public disbelieve any utterance from said politician ever again.

And it worked.

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The Blame Game
Even I find myself playing the media’s much-loved blame-game. So often has this card been played that it seems to have become pure zeitgeist to react to any problem by asking who is at fault. It may be human nature, but the entirety of human civilization has been an attempt to escape “human nature”, so I refuse to let us off that easily. There are sometimes situations which are unavoidable, we all know this and we know that no blame need be applied in such events.

So why is it that these events inevitably lead to the most blame being piled upon one poor victim. One media pariah, fired out of the bright-red blame-canon wearing a banner saying “Buy the [newspaper of choice] – otherwise you won’t hear about important things like this!”

Does it matter that the Spin-Doctors were originally trying to put across a message? I’d wager Alastair Campbell signed up with Tony Blair to make sure Blair’s policies got heard above the din. Don’t do much of that these days though, do we Alastair?

Are they to blame? Of course. Are they solely to blame? Hell no.

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Doctor, Doctor
The Spin Doctors were fighting a losing battle and instead of letting the media nose-dive itself into the gutter, they slowed the fall, eased it through the grating and provided a gilded staircase into the ocean of sewage below. Had the media simply driven forward, they may well have destroyed Tony Blair (sooner), but the rate and harshness of his demise would have left the public unable to ignore the media’s self-serving agenda.

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As it was, with the politicians playing the same game, people forgot which way was up. And now we’re neck-deep in sewage and I have the alarming impression that a significant portion of the UK hasn’t even noticed.

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The Sliding Scale…
The dynamic of the media – at least to my mind – is driven by sensationalism. At the top end of the scale sits the two worst offenders – those who, if made human, would currently be on trial in The Hague. I’m speaking, of course, about The Sun and, worse still, The Daily Mail.

Once one of these papers gets a story, they can set the entire media agenda. They report it, they sensationalize it, pervert the facts, quite often lie or deliberately misinterpret statistics and within hours, the rest of the mass-media has to report it too – because the Mail and the Sun have created News, and the other papers and websites and channels exist to report said News. Ignore it, and they lose out.

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…and How it Slides
Then there’s the other end of the scale – The Guardian and, formerly, the BBC – who refuse to sensationalize, refuse to make a story out of nothing, but who are still forced to report the tripe peddled by the Mail and the Sun because it is – once they’ve finished with it – News.

Note that those two are both non-profit organizations. And yet even the BBC has now begun slipping towards the Daily-Mail-Zone – grandiosely announcing they will ensure unbias coverage of the election and then quashing anti-Tory pieces, giving David Cameron more than twice the air-time of Clegg and Brown and airing “balanced interviews” where a life-long Tory voter stands next to an Undecided.

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Above are the BBCs profile pictures of Cameron and Brown. Cameron looks purposeful and intent, while Brown looks awkward and hunched. They must have several-hundred pictures of each leader – why choose these?

Shame on you Auntie Beeb.

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The Gears of the Machine
In other words, the News which reaches the majority of the UK voting public – because those of us who tweet, blog and receive our news from Uncle Internet are still a tiny minority – comes from The Daily Mail and The Sun. While The Sun was supporting Labour, we at least had balance on the see-saw of political sensationalism. For every smear-campaign out of the Mail, the Sun would have something equally repugnant ready to throw back.

But now The Sun has sided with the Mail in a combined effort to bring down the Labour regime. And they might just succeed. I’m not naive enough to suggest that all of Labour’s problems stem from the allegiance of one newspaper – but I’m also not naive enough to suggest that the Sun’s influence is negligible.

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Hypotheticals
Just ask yourself how great that Tory lead would be without the massive campaign of fear being directed at Gordon Brown.

If Nick Clegg hadn’t risen from nowhere and forced the Tory media-machine to fight on two fronts, David Cameron would have walked into Number 10 without breaking a sweat.

But what’s to be done? How can we reverse the force which drives public perception? Surely any attempt to force the media to change will be crippled by a campaign orchestrated by the very system it hopes to change?

Sadly, you’re probably right. However, this election may yet have one last googly to bowl (that’s a cricket metaphor, for the uninitiated).

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Generation Gap
Two days ago, the Governor of the Bank of England – Mervyn King – warned that whichever party won this election would be out of power for a generation, their cuts would have to be so severe.

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Perhaps with that much stacked against them, whoever takes power after Thursday will find themselves free of the chains of party-politics. If you’re guaranteed to lose the election no matter what you do, then you might as well do what you think should be done – regardless of public opinion (as set by the Daily Mail).

If only that were true…

There’s several reasons why this won’t happen. Well, two…

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A F**k in the Road
The Tories won’t do it – their reinvention is only half-finished – as long as they support policies like the Inheritance Tax Cut, they don’t represent half the people they claim to represent. They need the media machine to swing the game in their favour. Even if they look like losing power for yet-another generation, they’ll still need the likes of Murdoch and co if they’re ever going to return to office.

But what about the alternative? And, let’s be realistic, the alternative is a Hung Parliament. Whether that parliament is ruled by a coalition, an alliance – whichever or whatever – two parties will hold the balance of power.

And as long as their are two parties, there is no one entity to be blamed. Each will attempt to pass their seat in the blame-cannon to the other and neither will approach the blissful serenity of someone who knows they’re going to lose and decides to make the most of it.

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I Have a Dream…
A dream of all peoples, of all party-colours, united towards a common goal… *ahem*… Lets, just for a moment, walk past the grim future I’ve painted. Let’s put aside the inevitability and impossibilities and dream. What would be done? What should be done? – if we are to ensure that the British media ceases its campaign against the interests of its own readership.

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I don’t care if you vote Labour, LibDem, Tory, Green – even UKIP (because even balanced media would be unable to make your policies sound anything other than laughable). The only party I won’t include in this is the BNP – because I view them as less a party and more a form of sticky pond-life trapped in an embarrassingly useless evolutionary dead-end.

The point is – all parties have felt the wrath of the media when it catches the scent of profit – and, deep down, I suspect that all parties believe everyone would vote for them if only they were given a fair say. The fact that they’re all wrong in this regard is irrelevant.

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Out with the Olds
We need to regulate “News”. The act of delivering the news to the people of a country should be a public service. It should be a duty – not a means to make a quick profit by sacrificing public figure after public figure on the altar of zeitgeist.

Let’s set down – in law – a definition of News:

• Let’s say anything wanting to call itself “News” has to stand by these measures. Including News Channels, News Papers and everything else – filling all loopholes.

• Let’s say it has to be utterly unbias – and define exactly what we mean, not the BBC-style “We’re unbias. Did you see how pretty Dave looks today?”.

• Let’s ban deliberately emotive language – I haven’t heard the word “plan” on the news in ten years, it’s always “plot”, “scheme” or, once, “machination”.

• Let’s impose strict measures for any outlet which gets the facts – or stats – wrong.

• Let’s set up an independent organisation with the power to impose those measures and even ban outlets which persistently flout these rules – not the toothless PCC which sits safely in Rupert Murdoch’s pocket, purring contentedly.

• Let’s add to the mandate of all Terrestrial TV channels to require them to produce News instead of the BBC’s brand of masquerading sensationalism.

• Let’s have some means of measuring accuracy and believability – and make sure the public know how each of their News outlets rate on that scale. Let’s even make News outlets publish that figure front-and-center.

Yes, they’ll say it infringes free-speech. They’ll rally the banner of Freedom of the Press. They’ll ignore that we’re not telling them what they can and can’t report – just making it illegal to report things they know are wrong or misleading. They’ll send out the rallying cry and bring the UK population marching in the streets – obediently demonstrating against their own interests.

And, worse of all, they’ll continue to try and oppress those rights which, at least in my mind, outrank Free-Speech and Free-Press and always have – Free-Thought and Free-Opinion.

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Freedom of Thought
People have the right to decide for themselves – to choose their own opinions. They are currently being denied this right on a grand scale. It must end and I believe the above list is the way to achieve that.

The entire forces of worldwide mass-media will try to stop us.

But there is yet a hope, the tiniest glimmer, that they may fail…

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