By Prasun Sonwalkar
IANS
London : British Prime Minister Tony Blair will ride into the political sunset on June 27, but for one who is credited with turning spin into a fine art, he used a public lecture Tuesday to berate the news media and to brand them as a "feral beast' that rips apart reputations and hunts in a pack.
Blair's speech at the Reuters office moved columnists, journalists and readers to churn out thousands of words in print and cyberspace. Some defended his take on the unsavoury relationship between the news media and politics, while others ridiculed him and alleged that he was "biting the hand that fed him" during his 10 years in office.
In a nutshell, Blair said that the news media had become such an overwhelming player in Britain's public life that any prime minister and others in public life need to devote most of their time responding to them. This had undermined politicians' "capacity to take the right decisions for the country", he claimed.
In fact, it had undermined the nation's confidence in itself, he alleged. He admitted that he had courted the new media during is term in office, and was sure that his speech would be rubbished in some quarters.
Columnists and journalists were quick to hail and rubbish his intervention. Some admitted that he spoke some home truths that few in public life dared to utter, while others chided him for first courting the news media, perfecting the art of spin and then crying wolf.
The key issues, in Blair's words, are:
"The media are facing a hugely more intense form of competition than anything they have ever experienced before. They are not the masters of this change but its victims. The result is a media that increasingly and to a dangerous degree is driven by 'impact'.
"Impact is what matters. It is all that can distinguish, can rise above the clamour, can get noticed. Impact gives competitive edge. Of course the accuracy of a story counts. But it is secondary to impact.
"It is this necessary devotion to impact that is unravelling standards, driving them down, making the diversity of the media not the strength it should be but an impulsion towards sensation above all else.
"Broadsheets today face the same pressures as tabloids; broadcasters increasingly the same pressures as broadsheets. The audience needs to be arrested, held and their emotions engaged. Something that is interesting is less powerful than something that makes you angry or shocked.
"The consequences of this are acute.
"First, scandal or controversy beats ordinary reporting hands down. News is rarely news unless it generates heat as much as or more than light.
"Second, attacking motive is far more potent than attacking judgement. It is not enough for someone to make an error. It has to be venal. Conspiratorial. Watergate was a great piece of journalism but there is a PhD thesis all on its own to examine the consequences for journalism of standing one conspiracy up. What creates cynicism is not mistakes; it is allegations of misconduct. But misconduct is what has impact.
"Third, the fear of missing out means today's media, more than ever before, hunts in a pack. In these modes it is like a feral beast, just tearing people and reputations to bits. But no one dares miss out.
"Fourth, rather than just report news, even if sensational or controversial, the new technique is commentary on the news being as, if not more important than the news itself.
"So – for example – there will often be as much interpretation of what a politician is saying as there is coverage of them actually saying it. In the interpretation, what matters is not what they mean; but what they could be taken to mean. This leads to the incredibly frustrating pastime of expending a large amount of energy rebutting claims about the significance of things said, that bears little or no relation to what was intended.
"In turn, this leads to a fifth point: the confusion of news and commentary. Comment is a perfectly respectable part of journalism. But it is supposed to be separate. Opinion and fact should be clearly divisible. The truth is a large part of the media today not merely elides the two but does so now as a matter of course. In other words, this is not exceptional. It is routine."
Blair said that the media world was becoming more fragmented, and that fierce competition for stories meant that the modern media now hunted "in a pack". The news media had stopped reporting parliament, and alleged that reporting was much more "pernicious" on the Internet than in the traditional media.
He singled out The Independent for blurring the distinction between views and news. He said it was entitled to say whatever it wanted about him, but added: "It was started as an antidote to the idea of journalism as views not news. That was why it was called the Independent. Today it is avowedly a viewspaper not merely a newspaper."
But Simon Kelner, The Independent's editor-in-chief, said the comments were a vindication of the paper's anti-Iraq war stance, saying: "He was wrong, we were right." Blair had patronised readers of The Independent by assuming that they could not tell the difference between news and comment, he said.
Kelner added: "I can understand why he has been upset by the tone and substance of our coverage. However, I am completely unapologetic about our stance on what has been the most catastrophic foreign policy mistake of our time.
"In some ways I regard Blair's specific attack on The Independent as something of a badge of honour, and I am pretty sure that our readers will think so too."
The Independent responded to Blair's criticism by coming out with a front-page article on Wednesday with the headline: 'Would you be saying this, Mr Blair, if we supported your war on Iraq?'