I recently made a complaint to the BBC after watching their HardTalk programme. This programme, like Piers Morgan’s programme with celebrities aims to ask tough questions to authoritative public figures. As someone who likes to learn by reading case studies and listening to biographies of the greats so I can try to improve my own performance, you would think this would be a great programme for me. However I’m all too often left wanting.
About a year ago I became a Fellow of BCS – The Chartered Institute for IT. In that time I have been bringing myself up-to-standard to try and be as professional as I can by slowly changing my attitudes to meet the BCS’s code of conduct to the letter. If you ask my friends for something I have said a lot since then they would tell you I’ve been saying, ‘Don’t question my honesty and integrity’.
Since becoming a professional fellow having honesty and integrity has been more important than ever. Whereas once I may have brushed off Cllr Allen Bevan suggesting other people are acting in bad faith, now I find it offensive. And I equally find this about nearly every broadcast with the BBC interviewing someone of substance.
On the HardTalk programme I watched on 31 August 2011 I was offended by the fact that when the interviewee made a statement in response to a question, instead of the interviewer questioning whether that response was best practice they questioned whether the interviewee was telling the truth about what they said. As a professional this disgusts me the way the media are treating public figures with such disrespect so it is no wonder there is so much distrust among the public towards public figures.
I think the BBC should have an ‘Assume Good Faith Policy‘. If a politician or professional governed by a code of practice or ethics gives an answer to a question it should be assumed they are being honest and answering within their competencies and as accurately as possible. Clearly this policy should be careful not to prevent debate such as whether a scientific claim is supported by scientific evidence. However, the honesty or integrity of interviewees or other participants should be assumed and not questioned. Even if what someone says is ‘wrong’ it should be assumed they honestly hold that opinion and have no malice intended.
I have 4 degrees, I don’t want soundbites, I want detail so I can learn from heavy weights like many public figures are and have confidence in them, not the suspicion the media want to create in order to get a good story from a boring occupation. With the media questioning a public figures honesty all the time, or pursuing a line of questioning to attempt to damage their reputation is denying me as a member of the public my human rights.
The Human Rights Act gives public figures the right to express themselves without being made to damage their reputation. I think the BBC, by constantly interrupting politicians when they are trying to give a complete answer on their terms and not the agenda of the media who want to sex up politics are denying the public the right to hold public figures to account.
Politicians are supposed to act in accordance with the Nolan Principles and Standards in Public Life – each Labour Party candidate is asked whether they are aware of this. I think this document should to be the standard code of conduct for all politicians.
If someone thinks a particular politician falls short on these standards then they should make a complaint to the appropriate official public authority, such as the Parliamentary Standards Authority for MPs, or Standards Committee for councillors. Then whenever a lay journalist is interviewing a politician they should at all times assume that a politician is following this code, and if they were to question that public figures performance of this code in an interview on this, such as by suggesting a politician or other public figure lacks honesty or integrity then they should be made accountable to the Press Complaints Commission or Ofcom, or in the case of the BBC, the BBC Trust.
These lay journalists, who often having no substance beyond having a humanities degree and journalism training, want politics to be sexed up like a Mills and Boon novel, when really most of it would make people’s eyes glaze over. I want the truth even if the BBC can’t handle the truth. The truth is not the sexy fantasy land of conflict and intrigue the media want. The truth is often boring, but politics is not entertainment – it is about making the world a better place, not funding lay journalists who can’t get a decent job in something like engineering, law or science. Instead these lay journalists are wannabe novelists trying to make a story out of very boring life that most elected representatives have, which if the public knew the truth of would put B&Q’s profits up as they all rush out to get paint for their homes and watch it dry. In truth they have often studied nothing outside the humanities and their subsequent journalism training – I suspect they have never done a module in ethics or made an application to an ethics committee like learned scientists like myself have.
Politics is so boring that I can’t wait to hang up my spurs next year and set up a charity so I can change my community on my terms, without having to sit on boring committees that last hours and only produce minutes.