[Be it Jacob Rees-Mogg or Nigel Farage,
blusterers and braggarts are rewarded with platforms that distort our political
debate.]
By George
Monbiot
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Jacob Rees-Mogg during
his LBC radio phone-in programme,
April 2018. Photograph:
Ian West/PA
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If our politics is becoming less rational,
crueller and more divisive, this rule of public life is partly to blame: the
more disgracefully you behave, the bigger the platform the media will give you.
If you are caught lying, cheating, boasting or behaving like an idiot, you’ll
be flooded with invitations to appear on current affairs programmes. If you
play straight, don’t expect the phone to ring.
In an age of 24-hour news, declining ratings
and intense competition, the commodity in greatest demand is noise. Never mind
the content, never mind the facts: all that now counts is impact. A loudmouthed
buffoon, already the object of public outrage, is a far more bankable asset
than someone who knows what they’re talking about. So the biggest platforms are
populated by blusterers and braggarts. The media is the mirror in which we see
ourselves. With every glance, our self-image subtly changes.
When the BBC launched its new Scotland
channel recently, someone had the bright idea of asking Mark Meechan – who
calls himself Count Dankula – to appear on two of its discussion programmes.
His sole claim to fame is being fined for circulating a video showing how he
had trained his girlfriend’s dog to raise its paw in a Nazi salute when he shouted:
“Sieg heil!” and “Gas the Jews”. The episodes had to be ditched after a storm
of complaints. This could be seen as an embarrassment for the BBC. Or it could
be seen as a triumph, as the channel attracted massive publicity a few days
after its launch.
The best thing to have happened to the career
of William Sitwell, the then-editor of Waitrose magazine, was the scandal he
caused when he sent a highly unprofessional, juvenile email to a freelance
journalist, Selene Nelson, who was pitching an article on vegan food. “How
about a series on killing vegans, one by one. Ways to trap them? How to
interrogate them properly? Expose their hypocrisy? Force-feed them meat,” he
asked her. He was obliged to resign. As a result of the furore, he was snapped
up by the Telegraph as its new food critic, with a front-page launch and
expensive publicity shoot.
Last June, the scandal merchant Isabel
Oakeshott was exposed for withholding a cache of emails detailing Leave.EU
co-founder Arron Banks’ multiple meetings with Russian officials, which might
have been of interest to the Electoral Commission’s investigation into the
financing of the Brexit campaign. During the following days she was invited on
to Question Time and other outlets, platforms she used to extol the virtues of
Brexit. By contrast, the journalist who exposed her, Carole Cadwalladr, has
been largely frozen out by the BBC.
This is not the first time Oakeshott appears
to have been rewarded for questionable behaviour. Following the outrage caused
by her unevidenced (and almost certainly untrue) story that David Cameron put
his penis in a dead pig’s mouth, Paul Dacre, the then editor of the Daily Mail,
promoted her to political editor-at-large.
The Conservative MP Mark Francois became hot
media property the moment he made a complete ass of himself on BBC News. He
ripped up a letter from the German-born head of Airbus that warned about the
consequences of Brexit, while announcing: “My father, Reginald Francois, was a
D-Day veteran. He never submitted to bullying by any German, and neither will
his son.” Now he’s all over the BBC.
In the US, the phenomenon is more advanced. G
Gordon Liddy served 51 months in prison as a result of his role in the
Watergate conspiracy, organising the burglary of the Democratic National
committee headquarters. When he was released, he used his notoriety to launch a
lucrative career. He became the host of a radio show syndicated to 160
stations, and a regular guest on current affairs programmes. Oliver North, who
came to public attention for his leading role in the Iran-Contra scandal, also
landed a syndicated radio programme, as well as a newspaper column, and was
employed by Fox as a television show host and regular commentator. Similarly,
Darren Grimes, in the UK, is widely known only for the £20,000 fine he received
for his activities during the Brexit campaign. Now he’s being used by Sky as a
pundit.
The most revolting bigots, such as Tucker
Carlson and Donald Trump, built their public profiles on the media platforms
they were given by attacking women, people of colour and vulnerable minorities.
Trump leveraged his notoriety all the way to the White House. Boris Johnson is
taking the same track, using carefully calibrated outrage to keep himself in
the public eye.
On both sides of the Atlantic, the
unscrupulous, duplicitous and preposterous are brought to the fore, as
programme-makers seek to generate noise. Malicious clowns are invited to
discuss issues of the utmost complexity. Ludicrous twerps are sought out and
lionised. The BBC used its current affairs programmes to turn Nigel Farage and
Jacob Rees-Mogg into reality TV stars, and now they have the nation in their
hands.
My hope is that eventually the tide will
turn. People will become so sick of the charlatans and exhibitionists who crowd
the airwaves that the BBC and other media will be forced to reconsider. But
while we wait for a resurgence of sense in public life, the buffoons who have
become the voices of the nation drive us towards a no-deal Brexit and a host of
other disasters.
• George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist
