An appeal for ground truth

There’s much talk of “post-truth politics” as if it were the sole creation of social media and fake news websites. This is misleading, because the mainstream media – and in particular the prominence given to Westminster correspondents – is itself partly to blame.

I’m prompted to say this by Tom Crewe’s superb account of the Tories destruction of local government. Austerity is not merely an abstract policy, but causes real damage in the form of closures of libraries and Sure Start centres, cuts to bus routes and increased homelessness. And to this we could add worse flood defences, less care for the elderly and disabled and increased likelihood of prison riots.

It’s in this context that Westminster political reporting is positively dangerous. In presenting politics as a “he says, she says” knockabout, the ground truth of real damage to real people is overlooked, and instead it becomes merely a matter of abstract debate.

George Osborne managed to present himself as being on the side of devolution because he talked so much about the “Northern powerhouse”. But the reality of big cuts to local government meant he was in fact a centralizer. Post-truth Westminster correspondents who listened to words rather than looked at ground truth let him get away with this.

This trend, of course, contains a vicious class bias. “He says, she says” reporting tends to be deferential towards those in power. This isn’t just because they have better-resourced PR departments but also because, as Adam Smith said, there’s a “disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful.” Such reporting also favours those with superficial charm and over-confidence – traits more likely to be possessed by men from rich backgrounds such as Cameron and Farage. And of course in giving a voice to Westminster politicians, the voices of people on the ground are not heard.

All of this is to support Paul Mason who says:

One of the most pitiful things about the political class...is their distance from the actual experience of work.

A media which paid more attention to the ground truth of workplace coercion, wage stagnation and casualization would give us a better understanding of strikes than “he says, she says” debates between partisans. But this is absent in post-truth reporting.

What I’m appealing for here is for journalists (and economists) to get their shoes dirty, to look for facts on the ground rather than quotes from “senior sources” who are themselves often ignorant or careless of ground truth; in fairness, many do so – though I suspect these tend to the less well-paid reporters*. It’s people like Kate Belgrave and projects like Migrant Voice or Unpaid Britain we should listen to more than empty suits and gobshite columnists. Remember the original and correct meaning of Raymond Wolfinger’s words: the plural of anecdote IS data.” All of this, however, is a long way from a lot of the journalism we get.

* I know, I risk the charge of “physician, heal thyself” here. But I like to think that in my day job I don’t confuse getting a quote from a fund manager with pursuing the truth.

Comments

[Stuart]

Farage and Trump have both had proper jobs in the private sector.
How does that fit with your hypothesis?

[Guano]

Indeed.

Note how often political correspondents praise as a "powerful speech" something which is strong on rhetoric and weak on facts and logic (or which is based on a commonly-held misconception of an issue rather than the reality).

[Blissex]

«projects like Migrant Voice or Unpaid Britain we should listen to more than empty suits and gobshite columnists.»

As to that the book "This is London" by Ben Judah that I have already mentioned is excellent, because it gives *many* anedoctes, plus some relevant statistics.

It is in some ways the modern successor to Henry Mayhew's "London labour and the London poor" of 1861.

[Squirrel Nutkin]

I am interested that inheriting a large fortune and turning it into a smaller fortune by ego-driven dealmaking counts as a "proper job in the private sector"

[Dave Timoney]

I suspect your appeal will be in vain. The timidity and lack of interest displayed by journalists and economists is due to structural changes more than a "disposition to admire": the growth of the financial sector, the decline of academic tenure, the consolidation of the national media in London (and the upper-middle class), the slow death of local journalism, the substitution of PR for specialist reporting etc, etc.

Appeals to get their boots dirty will no doubt touch a chord with many metropolitan journalists and economists - it being the season of reflection and new resolutions, after all - but this will no more arrest the current direction of travel than Crisis at Christmas solves homelessness.

[bdbd]

What you're describing can be characterized equally well as either "post-truth reporting" or "post-reporting truth."

[Laban]

"the ground truth of workplace coercion, wage stagnation and casualization"

Otherwise known as "The main purpose of the bourgeois in relation to the worker is, of course, to have the commodity labour as cheaply as possible, which is only possible when the supply of this commodity is as large as possible in relation to the demand for it".

Hence the coalesced capitalist opposition to immigration control.

[Seth Edenbaum]

"There’s much talk of “post-truth politics” as if it were the sole creation ..."

"Post-truth politics implies the existence of a preferable "truth politics". Truth politics is what comes from the Ministry of Truth. I doubt that's something you want.

"There are scholarly men, to whom the history of philosophy (both ancient and modern) is philosophy itself; for these the present Prolegomena are not written. They must wait till those who endeavor to draw from the fountain of reason itself have completed their work; it will then be the historian's turn to inform the world of what has been done."

"[W]hen we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors… and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

Emmanuel Kant and Karl Rove

[Seth Edenbaum]

It's time for journalists to remember their role as advocates. Getting dirty is what lawyers do for a living. When they forget that they lose cases, and clients, and paychecks. Journalists can get wined and dined and paid, regardless. The end up in PR.

[a random eman]

"Post-truth politics implies the existence of a preferable "truth politics". Truth politics is what comes from the Ministry of Truth. I doubt that's something you want."

Obscurantist nonsense. Because the truth in most matters cannot be known for absolute certain, it doesn't follow that truth doesn't exist or can only be promoted by Orwellian institutions.

[Blissex]

«Hence the coalesced capitalist opposition to immigration control.»

But according to some Economists, employers make a mistake, because mass immigration from very poor countries does not result in a lower average wage, or even increases the average wage a little.

An explanation some give is that low wage labour is complementary to and not a substitute for high wage labour.

That seems to me a "too clever" argument.

[Innocent Abroad]

If losing the money your father made is a proper job, then yes.