The state of political journalism

Iain Dale draws attention to the Today programme and this morning's piece on the current state of political journalism. Peter Oborne and Steve Richards were on to debate the issue (for all of 4 minutes). It started at 8.55am and you can listen again to it here.

Oborne suggests that political coverage is reverential to politicians, citing biogs of Tony Blair (by Rentoul, Sopel, Riddell etc) and others as examples of this reverence. Meanwhile, Richards argues that daily political coverage is extremely critical of politicians to the point of cynicism. This approach debases politics, Richards argues.

Oborne might have a point about reverential political biographies - isn't that a common flaw of many biographies, not just political ones? - but Richards is surely closer to the truth in characterising the current state of journalism as debasing politics.

Oborne's view - at least as it was expressed on the Today programme - might be more popular, appealing as it does to the lazy cynicism which it helps to foster, but the daily media coverage of politics does debase politics, portraying it as an obstacle to governing the affairs of the country rather than as process by which complex societies make decisions.

Politicians themselves should not be absolved of blame but the media coverage of politics is damaging and unhelpful. The coverage, for the most part, does not attempt to be balanced, does not attempt to hint at the complexity of decision making, and almost never gives the impression that politicians just might be making decisions with the best of intentions.

Newspapers too often adopt the default message when discussing politics of 'a plague on all your houses'. Oborne tagged Richards as an apologist for the political classes for his view but it is this misguided notion that brave political reporting means giving politicians a kicking which is damaging to our politics and our political coverage. Political reporting might well mean giving politicians a kicking at times but if it is not to have a poisonous effect on our politics then it needs to be constructive rather than cynical (or indeed deferential).

Westminster reporting often suffers too from its descent into Kreminology (micro-analysing comments from a Minister for signs of a split with another Minister, for example). Oborne may have a point about the embedded status of Lobby journalists here and the insider Westminster Village gossip stuff can be a switch off but Parliament actually deserves a lot better coverage than it often gets. The press need to act more responsibly, acknowledging that politics is often about messy compromise and that policies will inevitably bring winners as as losers. Covering the Westminster scene, politicians who vote with their party are, for example, routinely dismissed as as 'supine' or 'lobby fodder' - even though they were chosen by their electorate to enact that very policy - and those that don't are regarded as 'rebels', even if they may have some more nuanced criticism of the policy in question than just being oppositionist (yes, I know there is only an 'Aye' and a 'No' lobby and not a 'Nuanced' one).

I've taken far too many words to state the bleedin' obvious here but the political coverage of much of the media is damaging to our politics. Of course, politicians themselves have their own responsibilities in promoting politics as a positive process - and they might often fail in this - but that doesn't excuse the media from its role in feeding cynicism of our political process.

Avoiding this journalistic impulse to view politics with cynicism doesn't mean that political corruption, hypocrisy or incompetence should be glazed over in our political coverage. Rather it means that the media should try and illuminate what the political process is about, what powers Parliament has to effect change, and what the limits are to political action (i.e. in terms of what can be done in the short-term, the power of corporations etc). It should give an idea of some of the competing interests that are in play and do so in a way which is not simply diametrically opposed lobby groups voicing off at each other, suggesting that the issue is 'black and white' rather than the shade of grey that it probably is in reality.

Battling for market share might make it problematic for newspapers and TV news to fight the impulse to pander to cynicism but it is important that they do. Politics is how complex societies organise their affairs and, for all its faults, there is much to be celebrated in the way we in the UK organise our political affairs. But if our institutions are going to retain their political legitimacy there needs to be a cultural change (aahh, the cop-out, non-concrete propsal...) in the way politics is viewed in the UK. Journalists and the media are an important component to this change and they need to act with the responsibility which comes from being unelected members of the Fourth Estate.