Journalists And Populists Don't Mix

Michael Hedges August 31, 2022 - Follow on Twitter

Watched carefully by all UK media watchers is the annual MacTaggert Lecture at the Edinburgh Television Festival. The great and the good - along with the spoiled and huffy - are called to address the great media issues of the day. This year (August 24) was the turn of Emily Maitlis, a well-known TV news anchor.

“Boiling Frog: Why We Have to Stop Normalising The Absurd” was the formal title of her presentation. Post-modern journalism was the subject. The title refers to the oft used consultant meme. Put a frog in a beaker of water, turn up the heat and the frog will boil to death. Conversely, toss a frog into a beaker of already boiling water and she immediately jumps out, perhaps referring to the number of BBC personalities recently fleeing.

Ms Maitlis rose through several UK broadcast outlets over 20 years, settling into regular radio and TV reporting and hosting with UK public broadcaster BBC in 2005. She reached the pinnacle - lead anchor of Newsnight - in 2018. She left the BBC in February for UK national commercial radio channel LBC for a joint radio program and podcast with Jon Sopel, who also recently exited the BBC. The two had hosted the Americast podcast for the BBC since 2020. Their new podcast - The News Agents - debuts this week.

The James MacTaggart Memorial Lecture is the keynote of the Edinburgh Television Festival. Since 1976 it has featured CNN founder Ted Turner, acclaimed producer Norman Lear, News Corporation principal Rupert Murdoch, daughter Elisabeth Murdoch and son James Murdoch. Several BBC Directors General have addressed the Festival as well as acclaimed writers, directors and producers.

The presentation was organized around five charges for journalists, illustrated with blistering anecdotes, to retake control over the profession and, more importantly, stand up against populist politicians. “To those of you wondering why this still feels like the Brexit and Trump days, I’ll say this: they are,” she noted. “Those two seismic shifts have not been and gone. They’ve come and stayed. Eighteen months after an attempted coup on the Capitol – and on the democratic functioning of America – the architect behind the lie that brought the rioters is considering another run for President… With the backing of millions of Americans.”

Drawing on her experience with the BBC, she spoke about use and abuse of impartiality rules. When interviewing actor Robert De Nero, a producer whispered in her earpiece that De Niro’s “rant was too anti-Trump” and “urging me… to put the other side.” She resisted “because, quite frankly, what is the other side?” Noting the power of the UK Conservative Party over BBC editorial decisions, a “former Downing Street spin doctor and former adviser to BBC rival GB News” is sitting on the BBC Board as “an arbitor of BBC impartiality.” That would be Conservative Party stalwart Robbie Gibbs. “It speaks again to how forcefully even imagined populist accusations of bias work on the journalist’s brain: to the point where we censor our own interviews to avoid the backlash,” she offered.

“When we hear Donald Trump talking about a witch-hunt or Boris Johnson going the way of deep state chat, our senses should be primed,” she continued. “Think how we live up to the responsibility of being the mediators between the actions of those in power in a way that is both fair and robust. Our job is to make sense of what we are seeing and anticipate the next move. It’s the moment, in other words, the frog should be leaping out of the boiling water and phoning all its friends to warn them. But by then we are so far along the path of passivity, we’re cooked.”

See also...

• Hot Topics - Journalism

• Hot Topics - BBC