Getting away with it?

The BBC’s Northern Ireland Political Editor, Mark Devenport, has pointed out that the standard response of our elected representatives is, frequently, ”Deny Everything”, or to put it more bluntly, to lie through their teeth. The ambiguities are not, as you might first imagine, in the language used (that is unusually clear in most cases) but in the relationship between the questions asked, the answers given, and the reality of the events.

Cynicism about politics and politicians is not new, and increasing cynicism is a major reason why the proportion of the electorate that actual vote is dropping at a worrying rate, at least to those concerned about democracy. Slugger has occasionally looked at the role of the media in the reporting and distorting of politics and there are the beginnings of rumblings of discontent about the failure of the media to actively pursue the role of ‘telling the truth to power’. The report on the media coverage of the 2003 Assembly elections, the coverage of the funding of the Andersonstown News Group, and the recently published What the Media are doing to our Politics by Financial Times Magazine editor, John Lloyd – who argues “the media… deprives the public of the information they need in order to act as responsible citizens” – are all, in their own way, indicators of how our political representation is increasingly shaped by the Fourth Estate.

Given the BBC’s acknowledgement of the ‘deny everything’ response, how will future political coverage attempt to address this blatant misrepresentation by politicians? Will we see a political correspondent, as opposed to a ‘reporter of events’, openly call an elected representative on their implausible denials when those denials are being made? (It’s worth acknowledging that, arguably, Mark Devenport may be attempting to do this now.)

If the answers to these questions are “It won’t” and “No” then the media will not only continue to fail to question the ‘truth’, it will be an active participant in the lie.

(As a former newspaper editor, now senior political editor with the BBC, said in 2001 – “To take part in a democracy, you need to know and you need to think. You don’t have to be a political philosopher. But you need to know the big stuff, who has power and what they are using [it] for.”)

Pete Baker