Society

The News As Static

The ‘new’ in news is lost. Coverage, signifying lists, baulks at asking questions.

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The News As Static
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It was the best of days in London—a cool September morning in 1974 with the sun and a blue sky for company—and I was hurrying down Fleet Street to sign on at the factory. Midway through the Cold War, the tightrope of international relations seemed to be holding. By and large the nuclear powers had managed to keep their most unpleasant weapons in the box; client states still strained at the leash, but backed down when they were fed, bribed or shot at—and news, yes, that little word with “new” in it, still meant stories that hadn’t been told before.

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Original journalism—the kind where you followed a lead, packed a suitcase full of questions, disappeared for a week (hopefully) and returned with something different and surprising—was still very much in vogue. If you’re pushing 50 you might just remember it. Otherwise, you’ll probably have to wait until the good times come round again.

The factory that I joined so many years ago was Reuters—the most ruthlessly professional news agency in the world. And when I got out of the lift that day at the fourth floor, I could see why. The whole building seemed to be shaking from the runaway madness of the teleprinters, furiously spitting out news in bites, takes, snaps and urgents. News was fresh and vital. People ran, tempers frayed, there was passion and energy—all sadly missing from the sanitised and silent newsrooms of today.

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I remember an editor telling me: “Go write a story that’s going to shout at people from the front page and have them running round to their neighbours and colleagues, saying ‘Look, what these guys have done today! Look, what they’ve come up with!’ Just because you write something doesn’t mean anyone’s going to read it.” So the mission was to write what mattered, at the length that it mattered, and send it out into the world to make an impact.

In those far-off days, there were questions at the heart of each story that I neither see asked nor answered in much of today’s news agenda. The spike in the centre of the newsroom was there for a reason—and it wasn’t to sit on. It was the point at which second-rate stories ended their life if they couldn’t battle their way onto the news agenda. Editors were gods, judging quite literally the quick and the dead. Surrounding themselves with the jewels of the day, they picked only those which shone brightly.

These days, alas, they are considerably less choosy.

In TV, I blame the advent of 24 hours news. It presented editors with a new kind of problem: How do you fill that black broadcasting hole, stretching away endlessly into the distance? And even more challenging: How do you fill it in a time of severe financial constraint, where costs are rising and budgets slashed?

The answer is all too visible on your screens and in your newspapers—repetition, trivia and endless cheap and cheerful “opinion”, yours included. You imagine we journalists are suddenly interested in covering what you the public think? Don’t be fooled. You simply occupy the space that we need to fill, you don’t need paying and you seem to have an endless appetite for writing on digital walls. To us, you’re water in a thirsty land.

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As for news, it has turned into coverage. It’s cheaper and requires a lot less effort. When the prime minister’s office flags a major speech, we go and cover it. We no longer ask whether he’s really saying something new, changing a policy, sacking a colleague. Judgements like that no longer feature in our calculations—because coverage doesn’t require them. News bulletins are simply a collection of things that happened during the day’s cycle—not a finely crafted collection of things that mattered. Increasingly, news is the score-card of the day—an avalanche of company results, trade figures and currency prices.

And it’s not just the reporter’s fault. Should an event demand their face and voice on the screen in some kind of synchronised activity, every hour on the hour, they simply have no time, let alone inclination, to gather the facts or background that would render the process even vaguely productive.

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Of course there are exceptions—and not just the ones with grey hair, or (like me) no hair at all.

Like vast oceanliners, a few of the top newspapers are slowly managing to change direction, aware that the internet has led away their fickle readers to a more attractive destination and they will need to fight to get them back. It won’t be easy. Already, a small number of news blogs are filling the void with quality stories, investigations and features that are keeping alive the reason journalism was set up in the first place. To tell human stories, through human eyes.

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If those innovative newspapers get it right, the future of news will look distinctly brighter than its present. And there may well be another bonus. Strong journalism is the basis for political accountability. We have poor politicians these days, because we have poor watchdogs in the press, often too lax or complacent to bark, bite and growl when they discover some wrongdoing.

Any fool can master the art of an eight-second soundbite, but if that is all our glorious media demand of the politicians, then that is all we are going to get. Better journalism will hand society some badly-needed improvements.

And that will be news.

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