WHEN THE ACTING HAD TO STOP
The media: Paul Johnson
argues that televising the Commons may benefit government
THE media event of the year was un- doubtedly the decision to televise the House of Commons, a decision which is already irreversible and is likely to prove of growing political importance. It introduces a completely new phase in making the public privy to the business of Parliament because, in effect, it removes the mediat- ing process of reporting. When Queen Elizabeth said she did not want the arcana of the state bruited about the inns and taverns of Westminster it was because she feared inaccurate gossip and exaggerations as much as the divulging of the truth. Once the reporter was permitted he became a participant, and often a biased one, rather than a mere recorder.
In the early days, it is true, the Com- mons did not make it easy for the par- liamentary reporters. Even when it toler- ated publicity it refused to provide any facilities. Systematic reporting of the Com- mons really goes back to 1731 (with inter- ruptions) but reporters had to make use of the public gallery, which was awkwardly placed on one side of St Stephen's, so only half the House was visible to them. The ventilation was atrocious, especially at night: in 1791 an 'air machine' was put in to `draw off the bad air' but it did not work well. From 1803 reporters had reserved seats in the gallery but they seem to have been on the back bench, and it was such a struggle leaving, during the break in the speeches, that the poet Thomas Campbell (then a reporter) blamed it for the trouble with his bladder which plagued him for the rest of his life.
From about this time reporters began to influence the political process, as Edmund Burke always said they would. Mark Sup- ple, one of the first regulars, altered and improved Members' speeches to their general satisfaction and on one occasion, bored and probably drunk, suddenly bawled out: 'Mr Speaker, give us a song!' William Hazlitt, who records this, and himself wrote reports in the Morning Chronicle from 1813, worked in the Com- mons at a time when ordinary members were first becoming uneasily aware of how dependent they were on being reported. An MP who quarrelled with the press became a non-person in the newspapers. Joseph Farrington, in his diary, records Charles Long MP, Paymaster-General, saying to him (26 June 1809) that providing reporters with rights was giving colour to Burke's prediction that they would even- tually govern the country, for 'in making their notes they omit, approve and dis- approve as their disposition to party in- clines them'. He also spotted the signifi- cant fact that journalists as a class have an inherent anti-authoritarian bent. 'All the reporters of the debates in the House of Commons', he is quoted as saying (6 Feburary 1808), 'have a bias in favour of opposition even though they are employed by papers which profess to support govern- ment'. That was certainly true of Hazlitt (it had been true, also, of Samuel Johnson so long as the 'Whig dogs' were in power) and it has remained broadly true, and therefore a political factor, ever since.
But if newspapers (whoever owns them) tend to work against authority, I have a hunch that televising Parliament will oper- ate in rather the opposite direction. For the first time the journalist no longer stands between the public and the politician. It is true that we have for years seen some politicians arguing and haranguing on tele- vision, and these television images are part, though a small one, of the public characters they acquire and which are largely fashioned by those working in the media, including those who report and comment from Parliament. These charac- ters do not necessarily bear much relation to the truth: they are often, in fact, `Fancy still believing in Santa Claus at your age.' caricatures. Now, suddenly, we not only hear but see all the members of the House of Commons as they actually are in their daily legislative and interrogatory work. As St Paul put it, (Ephesians xiii 11): 'For now we see through a glass darkly; but then, face to face'. The 'then' has come. Before Commons television the glass could be, indeed, dark, sometimes quite opaque. Now we can indeed see them uninter- preted, as though we were in the same room, and it is only a matter of time before a channel becomes available for transmit- ting Commons proceedings in toto. Need- less to say, a great deal will be uninterest- ing, but the point is that the telecast will always be there if there is something we care about and wish to see.
Moreover, certain periods of the par- liamentary week, such as questions, espe- cially Prime Minister's questions on Tues- days and Thursdays, plus a good many ministerial statements, provide absolutely compulsive viewing. I switched on the other day at 3.15, meaning to watch for five minutes or so, and it was nearly five o'clock before I could drag myself away. Nor have we yet had a really important debate, with much hanging on the speeches and the division, to force people to watch.
In the past, journalistic presentation of Parliament has turned reporters and com- mentators into cinematic auteurs. Lacking an actual stage to hold their readers, they create an artificial one on the printed page, people it with characters which to some extent are creatures of their imaginations, and construct artificial dramas for them to play. They heighten the natural theatre of the Commons, and their stars have there- fore been the histrionic types — Chatham, Fox, Burke, Canning, Gladstone, Disraeli, F.E. Smith, Churchill, Bevan. The real House of Commons has always been a very different place and those who have actually run it, for long periods, have tended to be sensible men of business who deal in facts rather than images — Sir Robert Walpole, Lord North, William Pitt, Castlereagh, Peel, Baldwin, Attlee and countless other dull fellows whose names are scarcely remembered. Live, unedited television, by showing the real House of Commons rather than the mediated one, will tend to play into the hands of the second type. For the television set is not an echoing stage but a small, intimate extension to the living-room, where a whisper can be more effective than a bellow and acting, to succeed, must be low-key. In this ambiance, authority, which need not shout, because it has power, and which can forgo adjectives, because it possesses the facts, is likely, it seems to me, to fare better than its critics, who must mount dramas to compensate for their impotence and ignorance. Up to this point in history, the intrusion of the media has made government more difficult. Televising the Commons may begin to reverse the pro- cess.
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