Guy Beres

I am currently reading The Blair Years, an epic tome of political diaries written by Alastair Campbell, who was Tony Blair’s Director of Communications and Strategy from 1997 to 2003. Although the book suffers from my subjective standpoint due to my lack of knowledge about Labour politics and politics in the United Kingdom more broadly, it has offered a fascinating “fly on the wall” insight into one of the most historically important governments of the late twentieth century. Ever wondered what newly elected George Bush was like as President? (”a curious mix of cocky and self-deprecating, relaxed and hyper”, p.506) Or what Tony Blair and Bill Clinton used to talk about on the phone as leaders of their respective countries? Campbell has the extremely privileged position of being able to inform us.

The impression that I have formed of Campbell is that he is someone who has his heart firmly in the right place when it comes to politics, but is capable of being fairly brutally pragmatic if required and is quite intolerant of what he perceives as incompetence or a focus on the wrong issues. What is also obvious is that the time Campbell has spent on both the journalistic and political sides of the fence over the course of his career has profoundly informed his views on media and politics and the way the two interact in the modern world. His views on the state of the modern news media, perhaps unsurprisingly, are bitterly critical.

Last night he delivered the Hugh Cudlipp lecture at the London College of Communication. The full speech is here [PDF], and there is also a summary article from the Guardian here. The full speech is well worth a read, and is packed with succinctly phrased nuggets of observation on the modern media such as this one:

One of the reasons for the sheer volume of coverage attached to big events now is the near infinity in scale. Something has to fill it. A lot of the time, anything will do, whether political speculation, an airhead columnist, or the latest guff from last night’s reality TV shows. In radio, “text us your views” is seen by some no doubt as a great contribution to debate. In reality it is random people, identity unknown, making random comments to help broadcasters fill space. Sit down in front of your TV and channel hop, and the “something” filling the space tends to be a depressing combination of the downmarket, the dull, the cheap, the occasional good repeat plus, thank God, sport, where it is the event, rather than the surrounding hype and commentary, that really matters.

I defy anyone who is not a human drone to read that without nodding their head in agreement. The “something” that fills the space in media programming and publications these days so often seems to be there for no compelling reason at all, other than to “fill space”.

But perhaps even more worryingly is this thought from Campbell as he winds up his speech:

When I left Number 10, because there was a lot of coverage, I got a lot of letters. Some saying Good Riddance. Some saying thanks for what you did for Labour and for Tony. And some, fewer than the other two categories, but worrying, from people saying they have thought about going into politics, but they see what happens to people who put their heads above the political parapet – the near universal media contempt, the refusal to see much good in any of them, the difficulty in ever having complex points about complex issues debated let alone understood, the rooting through dustbins, the targeting of families – and they think why bother with all that
when they could have easier, more pleasant, more lucrative lives in business or in the media or others walks of life?

It is a damned good question, isn’t it?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 29th, 2008 at 9:37 pm and is filed under Media, UK Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.