Press, Politics and Lying Bastards

[DanaC]

I've been catching up on some of David Mitchell's SoapBox rants. One in particular caught my attention. Hoping this is viewable from outside the UK :p

David Mitchell Rants about the Lying Liars




The now infamous Paxman interview he refers to is here:



At the time I loved that interview. I revelled in it. The times were changing, and old assumptions of respect and deference were being thrown aside, seemingly in an active attempt to hold to account politicians who'd been allowed a free reign.

With the benefit of hindsight I see there was a less desirable, and more damaging, cultural shift going on. A shift that has continued and taken us to a place where genuine political debate and open politics are all but impossible.

There seemed to be a cross-over period. A decade maybe, where deference was falling away, and scrutiny applied, without demonizing and whilst still allowing for politics to be discussed. We seem very far away from that now.

[Undertoad]

I watched the videos and it is interesting to see what you say from an outsider's perspective. Across the pond we have abandoned respect and deference long ago, not having the politeness gene so well developed as you Brits. And the result is, as far as I can see, all politicians are considered liars and campaign promises are sort of irrelevant. All media are self-promoting jerks just looking for their chance to score. And the public either takes a side and cheers and boos as if it were sports, or gets tired of it all and ignores the whole thing.

This is to say I watched the Paxman-Howard interview first and found it to be utterly TAME by our standards. We are pretty fucked up here and I don't know how it'll get better.

[DanaC]

That interview was a watershed moment for political interviews here. But it is almost 14years old. The current political culture doesn't have anywhere near the same expectation of respect as it used to; and the assumption that all politicians are lying in interviews had not yet become the norm.

[xoxoxoBruce]

It will, it's on the slippery slope. The politicians and press are easy to blame, but the bottom line is they've discovered it works, and they'll continue as long as it works.

[DanaC]

Less a case of it will so much as a case of it has. That was the beginning of said slippery slope. Or at least one of the early steps. As i say, that was fourteen years ago. We've been slipping down the slope ever since.

[TheMercenary]

Speaking of lies and a misinformation campaign, I thought this paragraph was particularly relevant ....

PolitiFiction
True 'lies' about ObamaCare.

PolitiFact's decree is part of a larger journalistic trend that seeks to recast all political debates as matters of lies, misinformation and "facts," rather than differences of world view or principles. PolitiFact wants to define for everyone else what qualifies as a "fact," though in political debates the facts are often legitimately in dispute.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...593433102.html

[DanaC]

Interesting.