Press Regulators

The concept of a free press sits amongst the most basic fundamentals of representative government. So any attempt to regulate the press is always going to stir up a hornet's nest.

Last week the government announced their solution on press regulation. Its aim is to be a compromise between the position adopted by Conservative leader Mr Cameron and the position adopted by Liberal Democrat leader Mr Clegg and Labour leader Mr Miliband (BBC, 2013). Labour and the Lib Dems had sought statutory regulation - the underpinning and describing of a regulatory body in law - that created a legally independent regulator. The Conservatives, however, had opposed statutory regulation.

The compromise proposal offers what essentially amounts to an upgrade to the Press Complaints Commission - made independent of media chiefs and established by royal charter. Its independence will at least be an improvement upon the major press organisations regulating themselves. But is it an effective solution?

There are always more questions than answers when the subject of a free press arises, and those questions provoke more questions.

Is the establishment of an institution, even as an independent body, a positive step? Will that institution offer the most sorely needed response to those accusations brought to light in the Leveson Inquiry: the more effective enforcement of the already existing laws that were broken? And, can it do these things without threatening freedom of speech and freedom of information?

'Statutory legislation is not required and most of the heinous crimes that came up and have made such a splash in front of this inquiry have already been illegal - contempt of court is illegal, phone tapping is illegal... policemen taking money is illegal - all of these things don't need a code, we already have laws for them.' (Hislop, 2012)

Those attempting to make this new regulator a reality will have to tread very carefully. The fact that spectacular errors have already been made - like a draft bill accidentally gathering up small-time blogs and commentators into the nets cast to catch the big media enterprises that break the law to turn a profit - does not inspire confidence.

If we are not sensible to the potential dangers of a regulatory response to this crisis - spawned from bad journalistic practice acting in concert with establishment corruption - then we may well find our ability to hold those in power to account severely diminished.

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References:
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+ BBC's 'Q&A: Press regulation deal'; 18 March 2013.

+ Ian Hislop in BBC's 'Leveson Inquiry: Ian Hislop says new press laws not needed'; 17 January 2012.

The Politics of Persuasion

Despite some dissatisfaction with the perceived lack of success of President Obama's first White House administration, he was none the less re-elected. But as emphatically as Mr Obama was returned to office, so too was the stalemate that had shackled Congress during his first term. So long as Republicans hold a majority in the House of Representatives and Democrats hold a majority in the Senate, passing legislation to achieve his aims will remain difficult.

In order to break through that blockade, President Obama is once more forced into trying to muster the support for compromise measures. And that means persuasion.

The state of the union was an all out display of political persuasion, as President Obama used the State of the Union address to offer the Republican Party (GOP) grounds for co-operation (BBC, 2013). Part of that was to use human beings as both visual aids and emotional cues - bringing real people affected and afflicted by real events into Congress, there to be face to face with the people who decide on the policies that might salve their pain or relieve their distress.

The GOP response, presented by Senator Marco Rubio, was no less a persuasive appeal, it was just targeted at a different audience. The primary aim was to offer platitudes to their core voters - while making a play for what they hope is a compatible audience by also offering the response in Spanish.

The problem with the politics of persuasion is that saying too much is a bad thing. Fully contextualising information and complex relationships leaves too much of a chance for miscomprehension. So information is condensed and packaged, to grab attention and convey information in digestible morsels. The State of the Union address, and the response, focussed heavily on sentiment and ideology, with facts seemingly open for interpretation either way.

And this problem is epitomised by American style political campaigning - simplified, emotive messages; specifically aimed to provoke a response or to encourage identification with the cause. Even the positive messages, that seek to rally people to positive achievements with positive emotions, such as collected in the Spike Lee edited Design for Obama (2009), cannot be left beyond criticism for oversimplification.

What is happening in America right now is a war for public influence, that is being fought with targeted persuasion - aimed, packaged and delivered just for the target audience; something that the increasing personalisation of our technology is only going to make easier over time.

When we allow ourselves to be moved by anything less than well evidenced arguments, we are merely encouraging people to play to our prejudices, which we are only too ready to hear people agree with. We must be vigilant against our own susceptibility to persuasion, and force those who seek to persuade us to use a better quality of argument, and a better quality of evidence.

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References:
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+ BBC's 'Obama's 2013 State of the Union speech: full text'; 13 February.

+ Spike Lee & Aaron Perry-Zucker (eds) 'Design for Obama: Posters for Change - A Grassroots Anthology'; Taschen, 2009.

Churchill, UKIP and the Populists

With the traditional political process struggling for legitimacy due to the ongoing financial crisis, populism is rearing its head in opposition.

Its presence is most readily felt in the protest votes cast at elections. Parties such as UKIP are doing well by gathering protest votes (57% of those who voted UKIP are unlikely to do so again; Ashcroft, 2013). The dangers of these populist protests at the ballot box are best highlighted by the contrast between the nationwide anti-cuts protests and the policies of the party that protest votes where cast for: not only are UKIP pro-cuts, but in their manifesto they include a cut to the top rate of tax to 31% (down from 45%), and the raising of tax on everyone else (over the personal income threshold) up to that 31% margin  (Randall, 2013).

These populist protests tend to be the voice of anger and frustration - but that alone is merely the asking of a question, a cry for help with problems unaddressed. What tends to move those movements forward is the emergence of groups willing to offer easy, and often insubstantial, promises to provide a solution. And those solutions often involve abolishing the bureaucratic complexities of the modern world in favour of a simpler time.

In such situations, particularly with the political right, it is not uncommon for those promises to come with visions of reclaiming a better past - but those visions are just romantic revisionism. Looking at history through the lives of aristocrats - with their estates and ballrooms; their wealth, splendour and accomplishments - can evidently give history the appearance of an age of romanticism and extravagance being slowly drowned in mediocrity.

But these beliefs in a 'better time', and other such sentiments, are evidently untrue.

The work of Professor Hans Rosling, reviewed in BBC4's Joy of Stats (2010), shows that humanity, far from falling, has in fact been engaged in a slow struggle to overcome the conditions that feudal and aristocratic society wrapped in chains around us. The opening up of movement and freedom, brought on by freer trade and greater interactions between diverse peoples dragged humanity towards a better world.

Then came the twentieth century. Welfare, spurred on in Britain by philanthropic projects like the poor reports of Rowntree and Booth, began to address the age old social ailments and injustices that had been escalated by the dawn of industrialism, or that had simply replaced the evils that went before. Rowntree's work astonished Britain in its day, dismissing the same myths that Professor Rosling's statistics do now, and elicited from Churchill (Marr, 2009) the response that:

'For my own part, I see little glory in an Empire which can rule the waves and is unable to flush its sewers.'

So if the myths used to harness the support of populist outcries are unlikely to produce the solutions promised, then what are they likely to offer? Let us turn once more to Churchill (Jenkins. 2001):

'We know perfectly well what to expect - a party of great vested interests, banded together in a formidable confederation, corruption at home, aggression to cover it up abroad, the trickery of tariff juggles, the tyranny of a party machine, sentiment by the bucketful, patriotism by the imperial pint... dear food for the million, cheap labour for the millionaire.'

Anti-establishment movements are essential in creating proper checks on the power of any organised body with the power to affect our world. But indiscriminately lashing out at the complexities associated to the newer, bureaucratic political world, misses the point.

Tearing down the structures put up as guards against corruption and poverty will only serve to give room for those evils once more. The barriers that populist parties, like UKIP, wish to see thrown down were not constructed as annoyances. We need better regulations - based on a solid understanding of the purposes behind them - and to make those regulations we have more efficient. We do not need to take bulldozers to them indiscriminately.

When delving into political matters, vigilance against our own passions and reactions is always necessary, lest in our anger we lash out at barriers without understanding, and find them to have been safeguards against the re-emergence of old evils all along.

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References:
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+ David Randall's 'Special Report: What voters should know about Ukip'; in The Independent; 3 March 2013.

+ UKIP Manifesto; April 2010; from UKIP.org, manifesto section.

+ Ashcroft's 'Lord Ashcroft: Here's why Eastleigh voted the way it did'; on conservativehome.blogs; 1 March 2013. Also covered by The Guardian, 1 March 2013.

+ Hans Rosling's 'The Joy of Stats'; on BBC4; 7 December 2010. See an excerpt here.

+ Andrew Marr's 'The Making of Modern Britain'; Macmillan, 2009. [Buy Now]

+ Roy Jenkin's 'Churchill'; Pan Macmillan, 2001. [Buy Now]

- Some articles on the changing attitudes toward poverty in Edwardian Britain:
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/lesson29.htm
http://jadesmg.hubpages.com/hub/Changing-attitudes-towards-Poverty-in-Britian
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty,_A_Study_of_Town_Life

Black Mirror: The Dangers of Popular Discontent

The last episode of Charlie Brooker's second series of Black Mirror could not have been more perfectly timed. Its scornful assault on political populism fits the mood of the moment, as signor Beppe Grillo's Movimento 5 Stelle and UKIP in Eastleigh cashed in on popular protest votes.

But the discontent with popularity expressed in Black Mirror is not new to pop culture. In fact, our cultural output seems to treat popularity as outright dangerous.

In Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club, we see a disaffected man become the voice for disaffected men when he inadvertently develops an alternate personality in order to escape from his life. As Tyler Durden he offers himself and his followers release from their frustrations, along with the opportunity to belong. As the eponymous fight club gains franchises and turns into a popular movement, its members, once the disenfranchised, have become a loyal and well-organised group, capable of powerful popular mobilisation in support of the cause.

Charlie Brooker's series two finale of Black Mirror runs with a similar theme. In The Waldo Moment, the protagonist creates a digital character, Waldo - a blue bear - who is used to ambush celebrities and politicians with insults and embarrassing questions while they are under the impression that they are being interviewed for a kid's TV show. When, due to the success of one particular ambush of a politician, the character is entered into a by-election, Waldo becomes a vehicle for popular discontent with politics that quickly goes viral.

In both of these works, the question is raised as to what the power created by popular movements might be used for; and in both works the answer takes us to a dark place. The disenfranchised, the disaffected, the dissatisfied; these people become the power base supporting leaders with deceptive or dangerous motives.

Those cultural fears, while presented in these works in extreme forms, do not require much imagination to translate into reality. We have an urge to belong. Fitting in with others is the safest strategy for surviving existence - and we will jealously defend those connections. But our need can also be wielded against us:

'the majority undertakes to supply a multitude of ready-made opinions for the use of individuals, who are thus relieved from the necessity of forming opinions of their own' (de Toqueville, 1840)

The popular and the persuasive offer us answers that require little more from us than our acquiescence. But supporting anything without a clear understanding of the reasons for them - and the evidence supporting them - means handing over a dangerous amount of power to those who benefit from your support.

As we shed the responsibility to analyse information and come to our own opinions, we also shed the personal power that comes with it. But neither responsibility, nor power, simply dissolve when we refuse them. Instead, the responsibility falls on others - and whether by our inaction or through institutions, we invest them with the power, on our behalf, to see those responsibilities done.

The increasing complexity of life is such that political representation is a necessity - but it is not one that should be taken lightly or ignored. When our vigilance wanes, and we lazily follow the crowd, popular support can become a very dangerous tool.

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References:
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+ Charlie Brooker's 'The Waldo Moment'; from Black Mirror Series 2, Episode 3; Channel 4; 25 February 2013.
+ Alexis de Toqueville 'Democracy in America'; Saunders and Otley; 1835-1840.