Does this tale from Ehsan Masood ring any bells with other people asked to appear on current affairs progranmmes on radio or television? Masood is project director of the Gateway Trust, an educational charity largely composed of writers and film-makers who want to see more voices from Arabic-speaking and predominantly Muslim countries published in English and in other European languages. He is the editor of two books published this year and also writes for the New Scientist and Prospect magazines. But it was his article on the Open Democracy website that caught my attention because it raises pertinent questions about both the form and content of supposedly serious British broadcasting.
I can't run the whole piece here but I hope this precis will get across his essential argument. "Every time a big story breaks," he writes, "journalists revert to what they have been trained in - and are practised at. This is to avoid complexity, and to write and broadcast about people outside of the west as if they were somehow alien." To illustrate his point he refers to a request to be interviewed by BBC Radio 4's Today programme to discuss whether alternative media are contributing to the radicalisation of young Muslim men.
Masood writes: "The [Today] journalist asked me if I agreed that the drop in audiences for established media channels such as the BBC is contributing to a possible increase in belief in conspiracy theories. Flaky ideas, so my interlocutor suggested, will take hold as more people switch to non-establishment media. And then came the killer blow: isn't it the case that such media may contribute to a viewer or a listener committing acts of violence?
"I took a silent intake of breath before asking whether the BBC actually believed that truth was exclusive to the corporation's transmitters; while all other media were putting out conspiracy theories; and whether he really was suggesting to me that the act of watching Arabic or Urdu news channels and websites, for example, is likely to contribute to an otherwise innocent person becoming a suicide-terrorist. His reply was interesting, to say the least. This more or less summed up the views, not of the BBC, but of UK defence secretary Des Browne."
Masood then explains that the Today researcher told him that Browne would be appearing on the programme to outline his arguments and the producers were looking for someone to oppose them. He writes: "The Today programme is usually good at sniffing out political spin. But on this occasion its editors let Des Browne put forward a theory that would better fit the pages of the journal of 'strange phenomena', the Fortean Times."
There are two separate arguments here. First, the general point about the form. Do listeners really benefit from hearing two people with opposing points of view arguing with each other? Indeed, do the interviewees really disagree anyway? Are they, by virtue of the courtroom-style approach in which the interviewer assumes the role of investigating judge, coerced into taking polar positions? Masood argues that Today "has a tendency to inflate disagreements between people, or between groups in society who, ordinarily may not be as hostile to each other if they weren't sitting across the desk of its studio."
Then there's the matter of the content. In spite of their rigour and attempt at some form of neutrality, do BBC producers and journalists fall into the trap of accepting government positions (arguably spin) as a starting point for discussions? Even if they do not, what criteria do they employ when deciding on what discussions to stage? Then, having made up their minds, how do they decide what "script" to give the interviewees? Here's Masood again: "Media executives need to understand that if they continue to exhibit poor or weak editorial judgement, this will result in worsening standards in their own journalism." His specific concern, naturally enough, is about the effect this has on people from Jewish and Muslim communities who, he claims, "are refusing to watch or interact with journalists from the establishment media".
But he makes a wider point too, which echoes my fears. If intelligent interviewees gradually withdraw from engaging with the mainstream media, then it imperils the chances of those who read, listen and view - in other words, the public - from being properly informed. In Masood's phrase, they will be "starved of essential sources of knowledge, information, and commentary on current events."
Note the irony too in that initial reference by the researcher to "the drop in audiences for established media channels... as more people switch to non-establishment media." It implies that truth can only be obtained through mainstream media. Yet Masood is pointing out that it is the very hollowness of that "truth" that is leading people to turn their backs on the mainstream media.
