Many folk on social media are claiming (so it must be true lol) that they are no longer "consuming" mainstream media news and who can blame them given the offering in the last couple of years? Our own experience is that, as technology has improved, journalism has deteriorated and, let's face it, output has often degenerated into the repetition of "clickbait".
The rot set in with Jeremy Corbyn. He was shielded from the BBC and other media by his handlers who were only too aware of how thick he is and that he should be hidden from view apart from stage-managed Nuremberg-style rallies. On the few occasions he appeared on screen (apart from on Iranian TV) the mask of the cuddly allotment-digging old gent slipped to reveal the nasty, ranting, bigot he really is. Fairplay to his team who, for example, spun the line that he could not appear on "flagship" radio programmes like Radio 4's "Today" because "he is not a morning person" (despite the number of times he has crept out of the bedrooms of red maidens in the early hours). This was, incredibly, unchallenged. No comments were made along the lines of "we asked Corbyn to come on to discuss this but he refused". The mainstream media (MSM) sold the public short.
Yet when the election came in December 2 Corbyn made a string of absurd promises to the electorate and the "state broadcaster" and others felt compelled to trot the b*llocks out as they had to be fair and even-handed. This was clearly "fake news" but they broadcast it anyway. As it was, the public could see through the shambolic old-shagger and he returned to count his money and top-up his gold-plated pension on the green benches - at taxpayers' expenses natch.
Of course, Covid has stripped bare the paucity of the current news offering. Supposedly intelligent media-village people, boasting Oxbridge degrees, have asked a succession of inane questions along the lines of a child on a car journey: "Are we there yet?" So we have the same, how long is a piece of string questions, repeated over and over again: "When will lockdown end"; "When will we have a vaccine"; "When will we be able to go to our agreeable holiday homes in Tuscany?" etc.
We won't be letting politicans entirely off the hook in this piece but it comes to something when we start feeling (slightly) sorry for the likes of Boris Johnson and Matt Hancock. Often the same media outlets will scream at Boris, "why aren't you shutting the schools?", but the minute that is ordered they shriek, "when will the schools re-open?"
Of course, there is a political element in all this though most journalists are usually too cowardly to show their true colours. Undoubtedly the biggest media tosser of the crisis has been that insouciant son of a Labour peer, Robert Peston. At one time this chap was lauded as being highly-intelligent and one of the best journos around but at some point he lost his way. He is now so vainglorious and insolent that he rarely deigns to address the Prime Minister or senior Cabinet Ministers by their names let alone their titles. At the start of his absurd and incoherent questions at the Downing Street briefings he sometimes manages a grudging and halting "hello" but that's it.
One of the best bits of Covid TV (!) was early in the crisis when Matt Hancock quite properly gave him very short shrift. Pesto - virulently anti-Tory - didn't have the cojones to accuse Hancock (for whom I hold no brief) of negligence but asked one of his stuttering, rambling, questions whether the Government was going to, in some totally unspecified way, stop negligence claims against the NHS (including by employees). You can see his nonsensical effort via this link and Hancock's succinct reply:
(Stay with it - there is a slight lead-in)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4e-yVqWH2w
Again, I do not wish to become a cheerleader for the Government (and they are guilty of plenty of genuine disasters throughout the pandemic) but they do have the most incredibly difficult job on their hands in a complex modern society to produce emergency legislation and measures. Shutting schools is very easy for example, but raises a whole host of very difficult problems. The press are giving "the Tories" no quarter. If a measure is introduced that is beneficial to 99 people out of a 100 they will find the odd wo/man out and feature the alleged injustice to that person or miniscule group at length. (And there seems to be very little research whether the interviewee is telling the truth or just making a politically-motivated attack.)
Here the politicians do not help themselves. Much of this stems from the crazy idea that all Cabinet Ministers are not just responsible for their own briefs but everyone else's too. Apart from having a broad political overview of policy this declaration of detailed knowledge is absurd and, quite frankly, a modern-day minister has his/her hands very full. Many think they should just concentrate on their own departments and doing their own jobs well.
A classic example of the ludicrous situation arises with the "pub meals" saga. The Government - rightly or wrongly - took the decision to allow certain pubs to stay open if they served a substantial "table meal". In normal times there would be hours of MP's and unelected "Lords" droning on and on about specific legislation. That is not possible in an emergency and most right-thinking people understood this law perfectly well ie. a sit down down affair served on a plate with cutlery, chopsticks etc. My local pub had no problem understanding this and, indeed, local authority enforcement and licensing officers are familiar with dealing with the issue of what a "table meal" is. But the Oxbridge grads who fill the media saw a chance to be "clever" and started a bogus "debate" about the issue which would have been a one-day wonder and soon forgotten but for Mr George Eustice, the Minister for, inter alia, Food. Now this emergency legislation applies to health and licensing issues and not in respect of agriculture and the production of food which is George's bag. But some journo saw "food" in his job title and asked him whether a "scotch egg" was a "substantial meal". This was not an issue for him and he should of left it well alone but politicians can't resist, and so he ventured an opinion saying one "probably" was! To the chagrin of Boris and Co this sparked a media storm (as there is clearly nothing else worth investigating at the moment) and several days of debate with interventions from Hancock and others.
The press should hold the political establishment to account but this is just risible stuff. We don't want the press being unduly deferential to our "ruling class" but we do need them to be professional (oldies may remember the great Robin Day). Many journos are simply not doing any homework.
But look what happens when a Minister tries to stick to his/her brief ...
The relatively new Times Radio is an antidote to the appalling pomposity of the BBC Today programme. The channel specifically markets itself as being "different" in that it aspires to conversations with interviewees as opposed to point-scoring interrogations. Stig Abell and Aasmah Mir have been a breath of fresh air Monday to Thursday (although Aasmah disconcertingly honks with laughter every few seconds - and many of us are looking forward to her being on air when a major figure dies to see how she enlivens the solemnity with her trademark guffaws!)
Other morning slots are taken by Jenny Kleeman and Luke Jones. Shortly before the Chancellor's Autumn Spending Review last November, Jones interviewed Hancock ostensibly about Covid-related matters. Now many listeners and viewers may not like Boris, Matt, Michael and Co but we do want to hear what they have to say on the minor matter of a global pandemic not least because it affects our personal safety and that of our loved ones. Luke Jones asked a couple of question but then suddenly switched to ask Hancock about Home Secretary, Priti Patel, who was in the news. Now you could argue that this was more important than a catastrophic health crisis (lol) and also that the issue was a broad political one upon which Hancock should have an opinion. Matt has a tendency to be a little tetchy and was clearly irritated that he had come on to discuss Covid but was asked to talk about the Home Secretary and he rapidly shut down that discussion. Instead of returning to the matter in hand, Jones asked a question about the forthcoming Spending Review which Hancock point-blank refused to answer (which was absolutely proper). He told Jones to wait for a few days and to listen to what the Chancellor had to say. His reward for this was that later in the show Jones was actually sneering about him and, quoting Hancock's words, sarcastically referred to him as "Matt, I'm not going to go there, Hancock"! An absolutely disgraceful piece of broadcasting and hardly the "different" style promised!
And so we come to Kay Burley. Who she? An astonishingly egotistical news reader/presenter on Sky News with the unendearing habit of telling elected politicians and viewers that she "speaks" for "her" viewers and that she knows best what "her" viewers want to hear. Normally the writer - who is a bit Green round the edges - finds her moronic performances unwatchable but tuned in before Christmas to watch (then) Business Secretary Alok Sharma discuss the launch of the Government's (allegedly) Green Industrial Revolution (if that is not, in itself, a contradiction in terms). Whatever Burley may think, a lot of "ordinary" people are interested in such matters.
Sharma talked about offshore wind, electric vehicles (and charging points) etc and to be fair to Burley she let him go for over four minutes without much interruption although she kept making a number of "huh" sounds. Near the end Sharma gave definitive figures on the costs but upon him giving hard facts Burley lost it. She interjected:
"A lot of numbers isn't it? [As if that's somehow a bad thing!] Phew its a lot of numbers for me to take in first thing in the morning!"
As if that wasn't bad enough she immediately switched off "greenery" and onto Brexit saying:
"...Lots of people who gave you, the Government, the mandate at the last election to push through our leaving the Eurpoean Union."
Sharma interjected:
"We have, of course, already left the Eurpoean Union. We did that earlier this year. What we are now doing is talking about coming out of the transition period."
Burley screeched, incorrectly, "Semantics", at him!
Sharma said the negotiations were ongoing and that the Government did not wish to give a running commentary on them.
Bored with the topic Sharma had come on to talk about Burley then jumped the shark and - bizarrely - started asking a Tory Cabinet Minister about Labour Party matters:
"Should Jeremy Corbyn have the whip restored?"
Sharma seemed genuinely surprised at the stupidity of this question and said:
"Well look this is a matter for the Labour Party and obviously when it comes to..."
Burley interjected aggressively, "What's your view?"
Rightly Sharma began to wonder what on earth this moron was whittering on about:
"Look Kay, I've come on here to talk about the furture not the past and you very kindly allowed me to talk about the green industrial revolution. We've talked about the EU. Let's not talk about he past and navel gaze."
But this highly-paid presenter was like a dog revisiting its own sick and said:
"Looking to the future should Jeremy Corbyn have the whip restored? [WTF? - Ed.]
Sharma: "As I have said, this is a matter for the Labour Party. It's not a matter for me or the Conservative Party."
If you think this couldn't possibly get any worse, it does! Please read on ...
Obviously Burley was not going to talk to a Minister without putting her oar in about Covid (and, as we shall see, there is a certain irony to her questions).
Burley: "Let's talk about Christmas. Should I put my supermarket order in now so that I can have at least six people around the table on the 25th?" (As it happens this rich woman and patron of posh restaurants should have got her order in as it transpires she was planning to go on a luxury African safari before the big day!)
Sharma started talking about getting infection rates down and gave the "hands, face, space" message.
This wealthy woman returned to her theme: "Yes sure, but the slots are booking up. I need to know to put my order in or not?"
[In passing, this is yet at least reflective of the apparent helplessness of the British people who are seemingly paralysed and unable to take ANY decision without Government advice.]
Sharma said he would like to see his own parents and family on Christmas Day but that we would all have to wait and see what the infection rate was going to do and, once again, tried to give out the public health message.
Burley switched to vaccines: "I'm sure you're a big fan. Dolly Parton has donated £1m dollars to vaccine research. What do you make of that?"
Now all politicians these days undergo media training and here in the Crow's Nest we had a pretty good idea Alok would, er, be in favour of this! And lo... he thought it was "wonderful" but made the point that his Government had already secured millions of doses of vaccine pending medical approval. Burley ignored that and astonishingly started blathering on about Dolly:
"What's your go to Dolly Parton track on Karaoke?"
All his media training had not prepared Alok for this blithering idiot and he looked genuinely embarrassed and started to splutter:
"Well erm (laughs) I'm not, I'm afraid er, I haven't got the voice for karaoke or indeed any other type of singing Kay."
But the imbecilic Kay pressed on:
"We could do a duet. We could do Islands in the Stream. You could be Kenny Rogers."
(Or they could have done the new post-Brexit version, Islands in the Sh*t.)
Sharma was clearly struggling now:
"Only if private. I wouldn't want to lose any of your listeners".
Burley: "OK it's guaranteed that if we can get together at Christmas that's the first thing on the karaoke machine - how does that sound?
I don't know about supermarket stocks but Sky News has certainly got itself a real turkey. But turning a serious issue into a pantomime is no joke. Like Corbyn, politicians will seek to avoid such farcical interviews if this sort of nonsense awaits. They will increasingly revert to staged, sanitised, events - and Boris has already appointed a Downing Street Spokesperson. It is important that proper journalists scrutinise the work of politicians at all levels and do not undermine this opportunity through their own egomania and/or incompetence.
But what next out in the real world? Well Covidiot Kay breached London Tier 2 rules in December with a grand birthday bash and was duly taken off air for six months! Sky - you have rightly removed her but for the wrong reason ie. because she is a posturing, arrogant, rule-breaking, dimwit when actually, she's just crap!
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