Former newsreader, and author of When One Door Closes, Peter Sissons, compares today's profession of broadcast journalism to that which he knew, and finds that the facts have become a lot less important...
This blogging business is not easy for me. I have spent a long career in News not having opinions. Anyone who joined ITN in the sixties was told that the first thing they had to do was to go round to the Middlesex hospital for an opinionectomy. ITN journalists were not encouraged to have opinions – ‘we report, you decide’ was the ethos. An old friend of mine, the newscaster Gordon Honeycombe, was suspended by ITN, and resigned not long afterwards, for writing in support of the 1977 strike by firefighters. Today it would be normal for him to have a blog, in which he could tell you what he really thought about all those facts that he spent all that time reading out during his day job. No longer are correspondents expected to stick to the facts, they are actively encouraged to voice their opinions about them. When I was a specialist correspondent in the seventies – ITN’s Industrial and Economics Editor – it would have been more than my job was worth to tell you what I thought. I could tell the viewer about the significance of an event or development – to put it in some sort of political, economic or historical context, but that was as far as it went. Now it's practically routine for anchors and interviewers to indicate where they are coming from. An interviewee can find him or herself having not just to handle searching questions in a TV or radio studio, but to fend off the personal prejudices of the interviewer.
The advent of 24 hour news has accelerated the erosion of the line between fact and opinion, with some reporters now seemingly unaware of the difference. Keeping it to the facts no longer seems even an aspiration. The pressure on reporters to fill the generous time available often means that the facts in a given situation are soon exhausted. It's then that speculation takes over, driven by opinion, and stoked by studio anchors under instructions from the control gallery to keep the dialogue going with the reporter on the spot. Does it make for better broadcast journalism? The question answers itself. The name of the game is to entertain, as much as to inform.
And it's here that I have a confession to make. I was not squeaky clean in this regard. I was always personally prejudiced – and still am – in favour of certain people. They were people who all had one thing in common, and that was Enthusiasm. Enthusiasm for their work, project or calling. An Enthusiasm that was infectious. The motor industry once produced them by the score. Likewise the aviation industry, which still does, Branson being the natural heir to Laker. In politics, Enthusiasm is a necessary, although not a sufficient, attribute for success. Until you are rumbled, Enthusiasm makes it more likely that the public, and not just the commentariat, will give you the benefit of the doubt. Cameron clearly has it; Ed Miliband hasn't, although he tries to pretend he has. Blair had it, Brown didn't. Boris Johnson has it, while Livingstone's enthusiasm for Boris's job appears to many as obsessive ambition. While leading the Conservative Party, Hague and Duncan Smith appeared to have no Enthusiasm at all.
I was reminded of all this while watching the TV coverage of England's friendly against the Netherlands last Wednesday evening. Every time the cameras cut to Stuart Pearce, the acting England manager, there was the most telling evidence that he shouldn’t be in charge of any football team, let alone the national side. The Enthusiasm deficit was there for all to see. When Ashley Young's equaliser hit the back of the net, Pearce didn't turn a hair. When Smalling was carried off on a stretcher, Pearce appeared to give him little more than a cursory glance, before resuming his seat, on which he sat for most of the game like a caretaker at a chapel of rest. Contrast Pearce’s demeanour with the boyish joy shown on the touchline by the likes of Kenny Dalglish, Martin O'Neill or Harry Redknapp when their teams have something to celebrate. You can see why players want to play for them. It's just like life really.