Newsnight is run by children on a fool’s errand. Paxman
Newsnight, it’s redundant. Who said so? Ian Katz, the editor of Newsnight.
Well, sort of. He tells us that the political interview is dead, has been for nearly 30 years.
Thatcher killed it, of course, oh and Kinnock. But Kinnock doesn’t count politically, he’s a never was, so Guardianista Katz can rag him without upsetting the fellow travellers.
Oh hang on, news of the political interview’s death is slightly premature….
There are notable exceptions of course, most recently James O’Brien’s patient, forensic unravelling of Ukip leader Nigel Farage…..
and of course….
…. Russell Brand’s Newsnight diatribe against politics and politicians was watched more than 10 million times on YouTube alone and it’s hard to imagine that the spavined state of the political interview has not been a major contributor to the mood of suspicion and disgust that Brand so powerfully articulated.
So that’ll be an interview by James O’Brien who lied about and smeared Nigel Farage in an odious hatchet job and one with a drug addled half-wit who wants a revolution but doesn’t know what should come after it.
And just how self-reverential is Katz?…O’Brien being tried out as a guest interviewer on Newsnight recently and Brand interviewed by Newsnight’s Paxman, sort of, as Paxman giggled his way through it and refused to tax Brand with anything more difficult than what flavour of bubblegum he liked.
Katz lays out the problem..nothing original or new here……point scoring journalists out to show up a politician who consequently goes into lock-down resulting in a combative but uninformative interview that most people will be familiar with…
The unacknowledged truth is that half a century after the bristling exchange between Robin Day and prime minister Harold Macmillan that reshaped the relationship between politics and the media, the broadcast political interview is stuck.
[There is] a safety-first ethos that conspires to make even the most interesting political figures seem dull, and rewards those who prove themselves to be “a safe pair of hands” with the highest offices in the land.
Increasingly, the most senior political figures don’t simply stonewall their way through tough interviews, they avoid them altogether.
Ironically Katz quotes Evan Davis, the master of the point scoring interview that tries to humiliate and belittle the politician…any wonder they are reluctant to be interviewed.
Davis tells us that the political interview has reached a Mexican stand-off where neither interviewer nor politician gives way : “The political interview is in a low trust equilibrium and it’s sort of stuck there.”
I imagine when you snigger your way through an interview, making fun of the politician, ridiculing him, is there any wonder you don’t get the trust?
Katz complains that politicians shut down and refuse to be candid and less defensive. He complains that interviews are impossible in such circumstances.
But isn’t that the job of the interviewer, to create an atmosphere conducive to trust and a level of familiarity in order to coax the truth out of an unwilling guest..failing that to lay out the facts for the audience and let them decide even if the politician won’t fess up.
Asking a question 12 times when the interviewee is obviously not going to give an answer is just stupid not great or courageous journalism.
Katz, after the longest moan in history comes up with the answer:
1. Both broadcasters and politicians need to acknowledge that the interview is a transaction that must yield something useful for both sides – and especially the audience.
2. We need to make a genuine attempt to explore and illuminate the dilemmas politicians face, to recognise that government is not a choice between good and bad policies but most often a search for the least worst option.
3. We need to try harder to understand what makes politicians tick.
4. Finally, one that follows from the first three: we broadcasters need to give interviews – at least some of them – the time to breathe, even if that means putting up with more boring, snoring bits.
Snooze. Does Katz write Ed Miliband’s policy statements?
You might have thought 30 years after the ‘death of the political interview’ he might have come up with something more original and less banal…otherwise the whole piece is an enormous waste of time….perhaps he should give up on interviews on Newsnight and allow guest speakers on to vent their spleen unfettered by the liberal constructs that stifle true political discourse in this country.
Geert Wilders recent speech in the Dutch Parliament comes to mind. [H/T Is the BBC biased?]
Geert Wilders: “War Has Been Declared against Us”
A Speech in the Netherlands Parliament
Ruffle a few feathers.
I can still feel the bowel-loosening mortification of realising that yet another effort the BBC calls ‘news’, which can affect careers and lives, is in fact what a bunch of overpaid, unprofessional, zero integrity ideologues have gleaned from each other’s twitter bubble, yet is punted out as speaking for the nation.
He’s also so sorry for his rudeness, he has waited a wee while to get a tame media chum to run a piece where he claims that, actually, he got it about right, so there.
A class act, no two faces about it.
I am also genuinely looking forward to the BBC spokesweasel statement on what a BBC market rate has waffled about Jon just being Jon and that’s the end of it as they control the edit. End of.
Not snoring boring at all. Mind boggling it persists, and is allowed to by forced, unique funding.
As I understand it, if a politician thinks they will be given a hard time on a TV programme they simply decline to take part. This is more of a reflection of the poor quality of modern politicians than the media.
On the other hand, politicians complain that interviews dumb down and simplify complicated arguments, so they (the politicians) can’t get their point across.
A pox on both their houses. I stopped watching current affairs on TV years ago, the internet is much better. Occasionally I might watch In Confidence on Sky Arts, but why is a current affairs in-depth interview series only shown on a minority arts subscription channel? What happened to the BBC’s public service remit (rhetorical question)?
Looks like I got my Newsnight complaint I sent last week answered by Ian himselft in FT :
Full Complaint:
You interviewed Jack Dromey, Labour Shadow Minister about the report on Pakistani abuse of underage girls in Rotherham and the current Labour PCC not resigning.
You did not however report relevant facts of close involvement of ‘Pedophile’ alliances ‘conflict of interest’ of the interviewee and his wife, Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, who were both facilitators and giving succor to Pedophile Information Exchange when they themselves were involved with the National Council for Civil Liberties at senior levels many years ago. One could not imagine Newsnight not taking the opportunity to raise this relevance had it been a Conservative interviewee.
Indeed you managed to ‘out’ a non-pedophile Conservative ex-donor, (McAlpine) who you had to compensate for your error.
Why do you selectively do this, giving one the distinct impression you are omitting relevant facts for political reasons?
———-
Thank you again for contacting us.
BBC Complaints
Kudos for taking the time and an excellent complaint. Personally, when I think something cries out for a complaint, I make sure relevant parties are copied into it and the BBC know it. At the end of the day the Tory Party is far too intimadated by the propaganda power of the BBC-Guardian axis to stand up to it. Tebbo and Peter Lilley being some rare exceptions.
Newsnight was once a serious programme made for general consumption and had a fair number of viewers considering the time it went out. Paxo was quite a draw then. Of course, coming from the BBC, it did reflect their general liberal left bias. Then, about 10 years ago, it began moving increasingly leftwards and proselytising for the left across almost every story it ran. The wonder is why Paxo stayed with it for so long if he really is a One Nation Tory as he claims. Perhaps it was the money , can’t really blame him too much for that, but I do feel he ought to have given a few Labourites a ‘ good doing’ on the programme just for the sport.
Pleasingly this leftward track of the programme correlates perfectly with the steady decline in audience numbers. So we now have the BBC flagship political programme bellowing a leftist message through a megaphone at the few Guardian readers who can stay awake. Still the BBC bosses probably don’t notice this because they only ever listen to what Guardian readers say anyway.
Fascinating to hear MrPaxo condemn current Newsnight staff as ’13 year olds’. Given his brattish behaviour over 30 years one would have thought he would have felt very much at home with them. I guess his love of condescension transcended any sense of irony.
I don’t know how anyone can accuse Newsnight of not being a heavyweight current affairs programme.
Why only the other day they has someone off The Great British Bake Off talking about his baked alaska.
The political interview is dead? No, BBC journalistic integrity has withered on the vine.
I remember listening to courteous, searching and edifying interviews routinely conducted by the likes of Alexander McCloud, Gordon Clough and Robin Lustig. It was a huge pleasure to listen to. Their objective was to inform the listener, not, as Alan rightly points out, to point–scrore sneer and belittle the interviewer, most especially if he was a Conservative. To retain some form of deniable plausibility over bias, Beeb journos have to give a pastiche of haughtiness and bad manners to people on the left. I remember once listening to Margaret Beckett being interviewed and jaw-droppingly amazing she was subject to every inch the hectoring, aggressive style Tories are subject to, and Margaret Beckett demanded to know what was going on. She clearly thought the interviewer had mistaken her for a Tory. Can’t remember who did the interview, but I doubt her career lasted long.
I’ve been in Spain for the last 12 years, and one gets the impression that broadcast interviewers know that if they behave the rude, obnoxious way their BBC counterparts do, they’ll get the sack – and rightly so.
Spain used to admire the way we used to be able to conduct political debate without everyone talking over eachother, now its the complete reverse. A few years ago I heard a Spanish radio journalist do a short English language skit satirising the modern-day British journalist, interrupting his interviewee every 3 words. One couldn’t call it a parody, far too true to life.
The Spanish dont just deride us for our football hooliganism, they deride the intellectual hooliganism of our journalists.
But our political class dont stand up to the appalling standards of our smartarse, obnoxious journalists. Labour have too much to gain from it as it’s anti-conservative, and the Tories are too scared to take on the propaganda power of the BBC.
The only way is down hill when you let over-grown spoilt brats dictate the terms of debate to reshape reality around their own deformed egos.
Some politicians do interviews though
Farage springs to mind and he comes over pretty well despite the line that the interviewer usually takes. So does Gove
For all his faults Straw is good, especially on radio
Maybe the modern crop of politicians just aren’t very good?