MEDIA STUDIES
Snobbery and resentment: that's what's behind the protests of Mr Paxman and co.
DAVID HILL
Last Saturday lunchtime I turned on Radio Four and was confronted with an episode of a self-styled 'comedy thriller' entitled In the Chair. This was a tale of intrigue, murder, double-dealing and bro- ken promises in the highest echelons of both the BBC and the New Labour govern- ment. The BBC, I grant you, did not come well out of this attempted satire, but you felt that it was really the new government that was the centrepiece of this not very funny serial.
The whole thing was, intentionally, not very subtle. The prime minister, Kenny, took guitar lessons and wanted to abandon the national minimum wage in return for donations from the City towards a bizarre additional millennium project. The chan- cellor was a dour Scot who was worried about the effect of such an announcement on the Parliamentary party. And the deputy prime minister, a bluff, working-class northerner, had already resigned in disgust at the direction the government had taken.
None of this would have particularly caught my attention had it not come at the end of a week in which there had been so much discussion of the government's rela- tionship with the media. Why, I asked myself, was the BBC putting out a pro- gramme with this particular content so soon into the new government? I am not taken by conspiracy theories and I reject any suggestion that the BBC is pro-Tory, but I do think that recent events show that it is deeply frustrated about its relationship with Labour and the government, and the rest of the media share some of this frustra- tion.
There are three obvious reasons. First, the government has managed effectively to continue the high-quality media operation that was developed in opposition. Second, the Tory party is proving incapable of offer- ing any opposition. And, third, Labour backbenchers are not proving the source of hostile criticism and rebellion that the media had hoped for.
In the face of this it is becoming fashion- able to assert that the Blair government is so infatuated with the need to run every- thing from the centre that it is stifling debate, ducking difficult interviews and undermining our democratic process. Hence the recent efforts by some to depict Alastair Campbell's appearance before the Select Committee on Public Administration as putting the whole government machine on trial.
The latest developments have in many ways been the most alarming. Some ele- ments in the BBC have now moved from asking the questions to complaining that they are not being allowed to ask questions. They are suggesting that Tony Blair and his ministers are running away from the serious interviews and looking for the soft option of interviews 'on the sofa'. In so doing there is a clear insinuation that a few well-known interviewers and so-called 'flagship' pro- grammes have a right to confront and grill government ministers before these minis- ters consider doing other programmes.
Perhaps most dangerous for the BBC, the Tories have weighed in behind this. John Major made a passionate, if vacuous, speech repeating all this and more. Michael Ancram, joined by other Tories, then launched into such accusations with a vengeance. While I do not make such a complaint, it cannot be good for any ele- ments within the BBC to face charges of being in cahoots with the Tories.
So what is going on? The government would say that Tony Blair has consistently made it clear that he is concerned about the lack of respect for politics and politi- cians in this country. He is, therefore, in the business of reconnecting with the public. Television and radio have a key role to play in this. But you cannot communicate with the mass of the population if you confine yourself to being interviewed on pro- grammes which have small audiences and little popular appeal. Hence the appear- ance on the Des O'Connor show and the willingness of ministers to go on GMTV and, occasionally, the Richard and Judy show. It all sounds very sensible to me.
Critics are asserting that big interviews are being ducked in favour of the softer interview. True, John Humphrys, writing in the Daily Mail, pointed out that the Prime 'Give me f10,000 or I'll introduce you to Peter Mandelson.' Minister and ministers regularly appear on the Today programme. But there is, nonetheless, a sense of resentment that the big set-piece political interviews are not now the only game in town. Resentment runs highest at Newsnight and The World at One. Frankly, the former suffers because it has quite small audiences and is at 10.30 at night. The World at One has a long-running feud with the government because Labour claims — and I bear some responsibility for this — that this particular programme has its own agenda, which is to provide the `effective' opposition to the government that the Tories cannot mount.
Surely there is no reason why any row should have developed over all this. Politi- cians can do both types of interview. But what must not creep into this debate is the sense of snobbery that underlies it. You cannot fail to get the impression that some of those who are responsible for the `big interviews' look down their noses at the more popular interview. The statistics show that, for most significant political pro- grammes, there is no reason for complaint about lack of ministerial participation. So there has to be another reason. I can only conclude that there is a fear of competition and lack of respect for the 'lighter' inter- view. Well, I bet they wouldn't sniff at the viewing figures for these programmes, which tell us what the viewers want to watch.
If the set-piece television interview is so intrinsically vital to the democratic process, why doesn't Jeremy Paxman turn his fire on the BBC and demand that a `flagship' polit- ical programme such as his own be shown at 8 p.m. on a Tuesday evening on BBC 1? Sod the ratings. Forget what the people want. Give them 45 minutes of grilling politicians on issues of the day. Not a sofa in sight. Not a song or a joke. The real, unsullied thing.
If this were to happen you can be sure that politicians, led by Tony Blair, would be queueing up to take part. Millions of view- ers at prime time — give us more. So there is the solution; get to it. Look out, Des, Jeremy could be coming up fast on the rails.
The author was Labour's chief media spokesperson from 1991 to mid-May of this year, and now works for the public relations firm Bell Pottinger Good Relations.
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