The ‘innuendo’ of political reporting

For those who missed it, yesterday's big item of journalism news was that the BBC's Political Editor Nick Robinson had become the subject of an early day motion in which 77 MPs condemned the ‘innuendo’ that appeared in this post in the reporter's blog.

Just over a day later, Robinson's robust defence of his original comments in his follow-up post had gained a swarm of interest, and going on 500 posts from largely supportive regular readers and what must have been a significant cross-over audience from other news sources.

The UK Parliament website carries a list of the signatories, who included prominent MPs Keith Vaz and Lembit Opik.

The problem is that political journalism in particular has to rely so much on the language of comment and the formation of theories (the blog posting in question was even explicitly titled ‘Theories on the Speaker’) to convey a true sense of the thought processes underlying politics.

There's just no way round it, and I was saddened that MPs were resorting to this albeit half-hearted measure to try and curb reporting freedoms. We know, by way of comparison, that most voices dissenting against their party lines in Westminster are not going to want to be named whenever a journalist simply reports that there are dissenting voices to be found - it's something we have to accept. When journalists started reporting at the end of last year that the Labour ranks were almost certain that an early election would be called, no one felt the need to press for the sources or to condemn the journalists concerned for making vague allusions. Similarly, when rumours of the antipathy in the Blair-Brown relationship began to circulate, or when in 2003 the rumour was spread that Lord Ashcroft had hired a private detective to trail a Times journalist, there was no expectation that these claims should be investigated.

In political reporting, simply parroting the messages that the parties are putting out (which would be the only way to engage in truly ‘hard’ political coverage) is not going to reveal the real and underlying motivations behind the actions of parliamentarians. Today politicians are coached in what is ‘on message’, so they are almost never going to confess their thoughts by being caught off guard.

A journalist, political or otherwise, has to use documents and interviews as the basis for his or her work, but to stop there would be a fallacy. There has to be some attempt to supply the reasons behind policy decisions – this is what the public need to know to judge whether politicians are truly acting on their behalf. The way to avoid this process turning news into comment is to take that theoretical element and apply the principle of balance to it also: by canvassing opposing opinions on intentions too.

Bridgend coverage criticised by police

The press is in serious ethical trouble for its coverage of the growing number of suicides that have been recorded in the medium-sized town of Bridgend in South Wales, yesterday coming under especially harsh criticism from the police.

A quick summary of what the press has been accused of by various sources, before I begin the story proper:

• representing suicide as a way of achieving recognition and fitting into part of a trend
• troubling the families of those involved in a cavalier manner
• misreading a series of tragic but not unusual events as a ‘story’
• dramatizing events, misusing their emotional content
• emphasizing regional stereotypes

The question that all the recent coverage has been implying is ‘Can you cover a terrible subject without at some level promoting it?’ It's an old problem, raised most often today by various forms of terrorist activities, for which I certainly don't have an answer, and as far as I can tell from reading the papers, neither does anyone really.

At today's press conference, an excerpt from which was broadcast on Channel 4, Asst Chief Constable Dave Morris (above right) calmly explained that no evidence had been found suggesting that an external force had encouraged these young people to take their lives.

He held up the front page from the South Wales Echo which bore the headline ‘REWARD OFFERED FOR SUICIDE LINK PROOF’, and then picked up a cutting from the Sunday express and commented on the layout, which emphasised the number of deaths by showing the faces of the dead around the edge of the page, and read from the intro which claimed ‘The suicide town of Bridgend is hiding a grim secret.’ He said bitterly:

‘What secret is that? I don't know. Maybe the press can tell me.’

Aside from the characterisation of Bridgend as the ‘suicide town,’ ACC Morris didn't remark on the embarassing use of the word 'Bid' in the headline on that page from the Express: ‘8 more suicide bids.’ That quirky example of journalese has a real ability to trivialize anything it's applied to.

As I've already said, I don't claim to have any answers, so let's look back at some of the coverage of these events.

Yesterday's Independent used the words of the mother of Nathaniel Pritchard, a boy who died last week. She was speaking at today's press conference. Before referring to the press's role in shaping events, the article noted she had a more basic criticism:

Nathaniel Pritchard's mother described media coverage both before and after her son's death as ‘extremely intrusive.’

She said: ‘We did not wish to speak to the media about our son's death but feel that we have to, not just for our family but other families in the Bridgend area who have lost loved ones suddenly.’

Moving on, she then blamed the press for actually glamorising the deaths:

‘We feel (the) media's coverage could trigger other young people, who are already vulnerable and feeling low, into attempting to take their own lives.

‘Media coverage put the idea in Nathaniel's head. We feel he was influenced by media coverage.

‘We feel it has glamorised ways of taking your life as a way of getting attention without fully realising the tragic consequences.’

One way of judging whether a sequence of events is in the public interest and therefore newsworthy is to see whether once identified it is at odds with the norms of the area. ‘Norm’ is a cold word to use, but perhaps the simplest.

BBC News had this to say on recent figures for deaths of young people in the area:

‘Latest statistics available from the Office for National Statistics show that there were three suicides in 2004-2005 in the Bridgend area for those aged between 15 and 30, and three in 2006.’

So according to that, the 17 deaths of young people in a year would be several times the rate seen in recent years and therefore of interest. The difficulty in making such judgments is highlighted by the words of a local journalist from Bridgend writing in yesterday's Guardian, who had quite a different set of figures:

‘The sad fact is that 16 suicides among young people in Bridgend in 12 months is no worse than usual. There were 13 suicides by young people in 2007, and 21 in total. In 2006 the total was 28 [...] One suicide a month in a good year; one every three weeks in a poor one. Men aged 16-35 are most at risk. The profile has been the same for years.’

However, having noted that the figures didn't add up to a story, he also found the press' desire to make a story disturbing, citing a different reason for his feelings - explaining that the press were exploiting these people's lives as emotional capital:

‘The profile has been the same for years - young men from poor areas, often with dismal prospects. That might be the reality, but speculation is more exciting. Had he just been dumped? Was he worried about exams? Was he being bullied?

‘It is telling that Bridgend hit the headlines only when the 13th victim, Natasha Randall, was linked to one of the boys by a photograph. She was pretty girl who, as every report said, had her “whole life ahead of her.” Until then, it wasn't much of a story.’

Many of the problems highlighted in relation to this coverage show how narrow the division between telling a story and interpreting one. Journalism is still a minefield after all these years.