Critics may carp but the media did good job of exposing crunch

Roy Greenslade
12 Feb 2009

We are reliably informed at regular intervals that the media, and newspapers in particular, are not trusted by the public. This week it was the Media Standards Trust's turn to reveal that trust in journalism, already at a low point, had fallen further. In fact, the Trust's report was quoting a YouGov survey conducted in March last year, which found that journalists were among the least trusted of 23 groups.

Without wishing to deny that we are unpopular, and also accepting that we are often responsible for making ourselves so, it is important to recognise that 'twas ever thus. From early in my 45-year career, I can recall meeting people who told me that newspapers, and all those who worked for them, were a menace to society. If only we would all pack up and leave the scene, things would be so much better.

Whenever a news story breaks, be it a domestic political row, a dastardly crime or a famine - any story, any time, any how - I hear the same knee-jerk reaction. It's all got up by the media. It's all the media's fault. Since the credit crisis broke, I have heard this stuff ad nauseam - on Any Questions, on Question Time and, of course, in Parliament. It's always the media wot dunnit.

The reverse is also true. If a story breaks that the media failed to predict, then they are blamed for failures to report as well. So they are damned if they do and damned if they don't. Last week witnessed the playing-out of a typical Westminster farce when journalists were hauled before the House of Commons Treasury Select Committee to answer questions clearly designed to suggest that they had been responsible, at least in part, for the global economic crisis.

In fairness, I cannot say the chaps were grilled, because MPs on select committees rarely know how to lightly simmer let alone grill. But that was not the point, of course. What mattered was not the content, but the form. The fact that the journalists were asked to explain themselves sent out a message to the public that, for all their (supposedly) clever answers and (allegedly) wily evasions, the hacks had been up to no good.

I heard the result on Radio 4's Call You and Yours yesterday, with scathing remarks about "the media", as if it (note the incorrect use of the singular) was some kind of unified, monolithic institution purposely created to make life as uncomfortable as possible for the public it affects to serve.

The truth about the news coverage of the financial crisis is that it has reflected to a large extent the growing sense of disbelief among the world's political and economic elites that the situation is as bad as it is. There has been a sense of gloom and doom in BBC news bulletins and in national newspaper headlines. But that is surely defensible as a reporting of the reality.

When the BBC's admirable Robert Peston first reported on the troubles at Northern Rock, he was traduced for inducing a run on the bank. Yet he was merely disclosing the truth: a bank was being covertly bailed out because it was in deep trouble. It was his job as a journalist to reveal to those out of the loop what those inside it were up to. That is not to say journalists should act irresponsibly.

But it was significant that throughout the Commons hearing the MPs were hoist with their own petard. They wanted to blame Peston for revealing too much, and then tried the opposite tack of castigating journalists for failing to inform their readers, viewers and listeners of the coming crisis. That united the Daily Telegraph's Jeff Randall, Financial Times editor Lionel Barber, the Daily Mail's Alex Brummer and Simon Jenkins - of both this parish and The Guardian - in defence of their various past attempts to warn of impending doom.

It was also interesting to see how exercised the MPs were by how Peston and, by implication, other journalists, obtain their stories. As if they don't know.

But the really fascinating point about the exercise was that it was widely, and fairly fully, reported in "the media". Again, it is doubtful if the public picked up on the fact that the journalists acquitted themselves well. The majority of people who saw, heard and read the TV, radio and newspaper reports would have gained the impression that the journalists were rather smug and far too supportive of each other, a cosy cabal.

In that sense, since perception is so important, the hearing achieved exactly what MPs might have hoped. It reinforced the stereotype of cavalier journalists engaged in a cynical disregard for the effects of their work. This portrayal of the journalist as nihilist has been a persistent motif of media criticism across the world. It would therefore be naïve to conclude by pleading for people to be more understanding about journalists and journalism.

In these situations, I am reminded of my youthful perplexity at my mother being so privately critical of a neighbour who was regarded as "a terrible gossip". Yet my mother and her friends seemed to hang on the woman's every word.

Journalists will never win a popularity contest for similar reasons. That does not mean that they should not bother to attain public trust. It simply suggests that they never will.