Eddie Mair's Touchy-Feely Show

[ardcarp]

WatO and PM (+ I guess TWT, which I do not listen to) lets the bulk of earth turning news to go hang and replace it with emotions, dwelling on scandal, mischief, quasi corruption, natural disasters etc, picking over carcases (David Bowie etc, nice easy day for the production team). They have the reporters , the journalists on the pay roll.....NHS, Education, science, tech, correspondents all over the world etc, but they are all sqeezed into 10-20% of the output....

Yes, and when ONE news outlet alights on a 'human interest (usually a weakness)' story, they ALL do. As if there not real events of global proportions that should be brought to our attention. It has not been unknown for Government (of whatever stripe) to wait for some obsessive news story to emerge before slipping out a controversial measure or two.

[Lat-Literal]

Yes, and when ONE news outlet alights on a 'human interest (usually a weakness)' story, they ALL do. As if there not real events of global proportions that should be brought to our attention. It has not been unknown for Government (of whatever stripe) to wait for some obsessive news story to emerge before slipping out a controversial measure or two.

One of the global news stories was the emergence from the St John Hopkins University of a possible blood test for the detection of eight types of cancer. That was on every single news programme on one day. No one really said anything about all the other types apart from the eight. However, I was reminded of what Jess Phillips MP said when indicating her annoyance about tweets asking why she fought for women's rights and not the rights for men. If, she said, she had been campaigning to help people with breast cancer, she would have complaints that she wasn't doing the same for people with ovarian cancer and if she campaigned on behalf of whales or something similar, people would moan that she wasn't campaigning on behalf of birds. Investigative journalists might have been able to consider those two things together. For example, is campaigning on behalf of one of two things - women or men - more discriminatory than campaigning on behalf of one of several things? Or is it simply being less discriminating which is a rather different thing and which would be better and which worse?

Another leading story in the week was about the decision by the French to compulsory vaccinate children. Very briefly and dismissively, ie in one sentence, we were told that some of the French public were opposing it either for religious reasons or a lack of trust in it. Of course, they had to skate around the religious dimension to avoid being on the hottest of coals. More time was given to why vaccines are not compulsory in Britain. It is, according to our medical profession, because we have done such a wonderful job of education that most parents are choosing to take up on the vaccine. The implication here was that if the numbers were lower, then compulsory vaccination would need to be considered. But the idea that compulsory vaccination anywhere was, by definition, intrusive to the point of assault was entirely off the agenda. Instead, what was said without any sort of challenge was that parents who didn't vaccinate their children need to remember that they also have a responsibility to other children. Of course, rationally, if the vaccine is so wonderful then any risk of not vaccinating would only apply to the families who had decided not to accept it when given the option. Had I had children, I would have fully agreed to voluntary vaccination but I would have strongly opposed it where it was compulsory purely on the grounds of freedom of choice. I feel so strongly about this matter that the decision in France affects my overall impression of Macron in that it implies to me he is, by instinct, invasively authoritarian. Ironically, it is the liberal end of the media consensus that would refuse to accept that point.

Anyhow, yes - there was in a shallow way masses on the NHS all week long and on every ailment across the globe.

[Once Was 4]

.....Yes there was the Boris interview. The questions which flummoxed Boris were very simple questions of policy not killer questions. Yes, 3 cheers to Eddie for taking it to the max by recalibrating....Considering he is the lead presenter ; on 75% of the time, he does not repeat this feat often over a year....and I am there shouting out the real question he should be asking as he follows some minor inexactitude that the interveiwee has spoken sensing some advantage/a bone to chew on, that often dissolves away, and valuable time gets eaten up by this. He does often have a disarming first question, that completely throws the 'opponent'....but while it provides an interesting first minute to the interview , it also often makes the interview a mess that has no flesh. Eddie is just as likely to get stopped by a minister standing infront of his stumps as all the rest are.....Martha Carney the worst of the lot.

....in general I believe we are talking ref the papp that is put in and encouraged by EM and his producer....he does have good qualities too, but not enough for him to be bigger than the programme....

Correct: so why could he not (Boris I mean!) have been skewered (as he richly deserved to be) without the use of abuse?

I am afraid that it is the curse of modern times that it is OK to abuse people whose opinions differ from yours and social media/the internet must be to blame for that.

I make to bones about the fact that I am an anti-Brexit centrist. I have had very interesting conversations with people on the left, also a few with people on the right, and we have remained friends. We are all going to lose out on this kind of situation if we are not careful.

[eighthobstruction]

Correct: so why could he not (Boris I mean!) have been skewered (as he richly deserved to be) without the use of abuse?

I am afraid that it is the curse of modern times that it is OK to abuse people whose opinions differ from yours and social media/the internet must be to blame for that.

I make to bones about the fact that I am an anti-Brexit centrist. I have had very interesting conversations with people on the left, also a few with people on the right, and we have remained friends. We are all going to lose out on this kind of situation if we are not careful.

....well I have the feeling there are a good many people not being careful....and I am of the belief there a few too who are getting ideas....

[Lat-Literal]

Correct: so why could he not (Boris I mean!) have been skewered (as he richly deserved to be) without the use of abuse?

I am afraid that it is the curse of modern times that it is OK to abuse people whose opinions differ from yours and social media/the internet must be to blame for that.

I make to bones about the fact that I am an anti-Brexit centrist. I have had very interesting conversations with people on the left, also a few with people on the right, and we have remained friends. We are all going to lose out on this kind of situation if we are not careful.

We need to be clearer on "touchy-feely". While not every example of news I provided was about PM specifically, it was indicative of emphases in all news programmes including PM. The news content I described was not touchy-feely but topically hard edged to the point of bleak. Next, there is the manner in which news content is addressed, that is, other than in respect of its obsessional nature. I may have overdone the stuff about sound effects but we can all agree that PM is different from several other programmes. It does have what to many is a jingly, gimmicky and even trivial character and to what to others is a creative, imaginative and slightly offbeat way. It is quite possible that many a trivial component is, in truth, mock triviality. That lull them into a false sense of security and then skewer them with aplomb. But not every one of its features is doing another Boris. For example, only this week, the very serious issue of the impact of plastics on the oceans was tackled on PM by a visit to the home of radio critic Gillian Reynolds. Sure, she had raised the topic in another place and was coming at it from an individual angle. What can we, the consumers, do, she had asked, when we don't have a lot of control over how the multinationals package the goods we purchase?

All very reasonable except that she was visited by a PM reporter to consider the many items in her home. For the entire duration of the interview, there were effectively two running jokes - one involving the way in which she had located and purchased masses of products in plastic that many people would not have known existed, eg very unusual cleaning materials, and two, the occasional stumbling over plastic containers involving alcohol and her light-hearted wish not to dwell on those. It is precisely in this sort of area where the programme isn't being touchy-feely instead of being full of hard, bleak content but simply just not being challenging enough on topics which demand to be addressed much more seriously than most.

PM like other news ish programmes only sees in the moment. I tend to agree with the post which lamented excessive dwelling by the BBC and other news outlets on politicians' personal lives. That's notwithstanding those can often have something to say about the characters of the people who are responsible for shaping policy allegedly on all of our behalves. This was, of course, the week of the news of the affair of Henry Bolton. The newsmakers have defended any unexpected dwelling on that matter as being in the public interest because it collided with racist tweets. Fair enough. But no one has ever explained to the public who Bolton really is politically and what his role might be. I find it extraordinary that he has never been challenged on the fact that he was a Lib Dem just a few years ago and has never explained why he made the most dramatic party political leap in history. I also think the likes of PM should at least already be discussing the prospect of an unprecedented surge for the BNP. That is in the light of a UKIP collapse, an ineffectual Tory Brexit deal that doesn't ensure managed immigration, and a future Labour (Coalition?) Government which in those specific circumstances would be very hard fought by British fascists nationwide by whatever means.

[DracoM]

<< All very reasonable except that she was visited by a PM reporter to consider the many items in her home. For the entire duration of the interview, there were effectively two running jokes - one involving the way in which she had located and purchased masses of products in plastic that many people would not have known existed, eg very unusual cleaning materials, and two, the occasional stumbling over plastic containers involving alcohol and her light-hearted wish not to dwell on those. It is precisely in this sort of area where the programme isn't being touchy-feely instead of being full of hard, bleak content but simply just not being challenging enough on topics which demand to be addressed much more seriously than most. >>

A pretty one-sided re-imagining of the interview - which I also heard.

A VERY serious point was being made, unmissed at least by this listener, and the powerful polemic was couched in non-scientific terms in GR's hoome - i.e. bringing home to ALL of us the problem in highly pragmatic terms.

[Lat-Literal]

One last detailed post. From my own point of view, the touchy-feely credentials or otherwise of a programme like PM in the modern age are inevitably brought into question by the overall changes in tone by the media during recent years. Here it is social media that is normally presented as the villain. One which encourages communication that is aggressive, abusive or "just" crude. While it is true that social media has been influential, those of us who are old enough to have memories might wish to point out that the entire picture has substantially changed. This change applies not so much to atrocities which have always occurred and been reported although in the long term past not as visually or repetitively in television news but to swearing and prevalent attitudes of the kind which President Trump would call normal locker room banter. PM, which many would argue has a slight liberal left leaning, and Channel 4 News have become much like The Guardian in regard to the former. This is to say that while some conservative newspapers will still insert an asterisk or more in what was once called offensive language, the liberal press in particular would never have done so on the grounds that it was unnecessary censorship and its readership was adult.

So while, in the main, news broadcasting would not once have used expletives, clearly this is not the case any longer. When the aforementioned President talks in terms of foreign countries being "s*******s", it now apologises in advance for the use of the full word. It then adds that because what he said has been considered so atrocious by many, it has a public duty to repeat it, leaving the audience in no doubt. As for the non swearing areas, they are quite difficult to define with just a few examples. Defenders of the new media tone will no doubt say that they are not in the same league as, say, beheadings by terrorists, systemic abuses in social care and the wide range of horrors that are daily news content. But they will involve reports, perhaps, of how one person of influence said to another in a similar position that he should go screw his mother or a supposedly light hearted depiction of kicking away an old man's stick or the implication with a "calm down dear" that a woman is being over-hysterical. On another day, it will be laying in to "blue-eyed white men", describing a political party as being full of homosexuals or having a go at the disabled child of a model and celebrity, not least because she is allegedly of limited intellect, highly successful and controversial.

When the touchy-feely programmes feel they have a responsibility to report on all of these things, they cease to be touchy-feely in any earlier normal sense. Instead, they become conveyers or even purveyors of the modern tone which many would, if normalised, still describe as nasty. That tone does, of course, extend to many other areas of the media. It wasn't that many decades ago when there were panels deciding that the use of the word "screw" was unacceptable in British situation comedy. Now "Mrs Brown's Boys", a programme littered with the F word, is prime time viewing, with one of the biggest audiences including during Christmas, and it is able to claim completely erroneously that it is unusually in the style of sitcoms forty years ago. The young truly believe that latter point not having lived during the decade with which it is compared and - I think that its tone and what I am about to say are far from being disconnected - are willing to turn a blind eye on allegations of societally abusive tax avoidance on the part of its stars. The main impact of Trump saying "s******s" is that everybody on Radio 4 now has to say it. That was the standard of joke on Ross Noble's programme broadcast this week at 6.30pm on Radio 4. There were no "asterisks". In truth, it really didn't require a Trump as a trigger as the language is as commonplace as the line "we got drunk" in the average pop song. Culturally, it's a uniform which has connotations of aggression towards other people and of self-harm. Film aside, until the late 1990s, this was the substance only of the fringes - Warhol and punk rock, Sadowitz and Derek and Clive.

Partially as a consequence of the zeitgeist, I have recently been reviewing the history of the American sitcom. Childhood memories of what people would now call "comfort television" are renewed via glimpses of the trite but clever Mary Tyler Moore and Andy Griffiths shows along with I Dream of Jeannie and Bewitched. There is much to be learned here. One sees that the genuinely sophisticated sharpness of the occasional modern sitcom which has managed to avoid completely sinking into the mire - Frasier or The Big Bang Theory - was also in evidence in the 1960s in, for example, Bilko or Get Smart. By the 1980s, "Diff'rent Strokes" was featuring a wise cracking overly adult child in a sitcom that on occasions opted to "tackle" domestic abuse and even paedophilia. Many of the cast ended up at war with each other and ultimately dead at a young age. By the 1990s the Larry Sanders Show could barely get through five minutes of its intellectual humour without an expletive. He himself became massively rich, guarded his private life as if it were Fort Knox, and would charitably be described as mysterious or less charitably as probably very dark. In the 2000s expletives and stick kicking were almost everywhere, including in sitcom cartoons which revel in the nasty by their writers' own admission. President Trump's locker room? Perhaps, but that just merges with the most infantile of mixed gender playgrounds to reveal that it doesn't even have a claim to be "just how men are when together". It's how boys are together and girls are together and boys and girls are together when what they only really excel at is promoting self.

But then ain't life just fall of myths parading as truths. Here's another example and its an uncomfortable one for the resurgent womens' movement. On viewing the older American sitcoms the very idea that in the days before 1967 the stereotypical middle class woman was a little person just serving her man in the home is instantly dispelled. From the very outset, women in these productions were presented as determined and savvy and the men as utter buffoons. Beyond that, one might marvel how and question why such supposedly clean-cut fare could ever have been produced during the time of the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis and ultimately Vietnam, especially when some of it was set in the then totally male army barracks, boardrooms and state jails. The answer is largely about societal attitudes which believed in the promotion of at least some sort of respect on a humble interpersonal level. The emphasis was on game play or even word play in disagreement rather than on aggressive polarisation and out and out conflict. Fascinatingly, one senses that in the absence of the latter, there was less stress on controlling others and more confidence in permitting mild scenes of confusion and chaos. What else of that time? As it happens, Presidents Johnson and Nixon were two of the most foul mouthed Presidents in American history but that was not reflected in the culture. It wasn't there in light entertainment for that in tone was light and certainly the news networks had no feeling of obligation to report the words they specifically used in lurid detail. There was enough drama in the news itself and on the drama channels.

Given the differences in tone of those long-ago sitcoms, I looked at the history of film censorship. The movies were always on a different time path. The industry was able to put forward an early case for relaxation of the rules and hence remove any scope in society to relax at any moment. I hadn't realised, though, that so-called film censorship significantly loosened in the US in 1966 whereas it wouldn't be until 1999 when it happened in the UK under the auspices of The Independent's Andreas Whittam Smith. It took 20-30 years for the ways of film to seep into broadcasting Stateside, fuelled by the introduction of the competitive home videotape. The change has been more rapid on this side of the pond, no doubt because of increasing Americanisation and the advent of social media. Somewhere along the way, Tipper Gore got involved but with minimal impact and not without huge ridicule. It was a rare moment when any alternative stance wasn't being taken up by those on the extreme religious right. Once they had established themselves as equating to any different sort of standard, with all of the double standards that went with it, it was all very easy for other critics of the developments to be knocked down. The coast was clear for a realistic miserabilism that whether of the so-called left or right had as its principal undercurrent violence. And that in the 21st Century has tended to be true even where it appears that violence is being opposed.

It is only now that a different critique is starting to emerge from the liberal left. There is, though, a lack of clarity and/or a contradiction in its outlook. For example, those "s*******s" of President Trump which are deemed offensive may not have been so if they applied not to other countries but to abusive places or regimes. It isn't that the word is being stated by the likes of PM and Channel 4 because it is regarded as indicative of an overly aggressive, immature or crude culture but rather that it is has been combined with notions of race and much of the media wants to portray the President as uniquely unpleasant. Well, if only. There will have been many a protester on the street this weekend with a placard saying "F**k off Trump". I can guarantee that many news programmes will have reported it all as representing high principle. And if that wasn't so utterly depressing, it would be blimmin' hilarious.

[Once Was 4]

I'm afraid one of the problems with getting old is viewing modern media with increasing distaste as factual reporting followed by a serious analysis of a problem and potential solutions disappears amidst a welter of anecdotal stories - the FT and the Economist are probably the sole survivors of this genus as even the Guardian having slid into tabloid size which will soon be followed I suspect by a slide into tabloid mentality.

By the way: has anybody got any comments about the BBC1 TV 'Breakfast' show? There are attempts to get to grips with serious issues in this (and a couple of the presenters do try and give politicians a good grilling - one, in my opinion, sometimes finding it difficult to hide his personal dislike of certain interviewees - not just politicians - but never using abuse). I am thinking though primarily of its arts coverage - or rather what it regards as its arts coverage. At one time this consisted of pulling old rock musicians out of their well-deserved obscurity. Now other nonentities are given the limelight; or so it seems to me - am I just becoming an old moaner?

[LMcD]

By the way: has anybody got any comments about the BBC1 TV 'Breakfast' show? There are attempts to get to grips with serious issues in this (and a couple of the presenters do try and give politicians a good grilling - one, in my opinion, sometimes finding it difficult to hide his personal dislike of certain interviewees - not just politicians - but never using abuse). I am thinking though primarily of its arts coverage - or rather what it regards as its arts coverage. At one time this consisted of pulling old rock musicians out of their well-deserved obscurity. Now other nonentities are given the limelight; or so it seems to me - am I just becoming an old moaner?

Can't help you, I'm afraid - too busy listening to the 'Today' programme on Radio 4.

[Lat-Literal]

By the way: has anybody got any comments about the BBC1 TV 'Breakfast' show? There are attempts to get to grips with serious issues in this (and a couple of the presenters do try and give politicians a good grilling - one, in my opinion, sometimes finding it difficult to hide his personal dislike of certain interviewees - not just politicians - but never using abuse). I am thinking though primarily of its arts coverage - or rather what it regards as its arts coverage. At one time this consisted of pulling old rock musicians out of their well-deserved obscurity. Now other nonentities are given the limelight; or so it seems to me - am I just becoming an old moaner?

Not keen.

Among the BBC news and politics types who haven't done a lot to upset me:

Fiona Bruce, Jo Coburn, Duncan Golestani. Martha Kearney, Riz Lateef, Alicia McCarthy, Clive Myrie, Nick Robinson, Sarah Smith.

Six out of the nine happen to be women.

There are also some atrocious women in this area of the BBC as well as some atrocious men.

[teamsaint]

Not keen.

Among the BBC news and politics types who haven't done a lot to upset me:

Fiona Bruce, Jo Coburn, Duncan Golestani. Martha Kearney, Riz Lateef, Alicia McCarthy, Clive Myrie, Nick Robinson, Sarah Smith.

Six out of the nine happen to be women.

There are also some atrocious women in this area of the BBC as well as some atrocious men.

Nick Robinson thinks that the very wealthy in the UK pay enough tax, and had a nice prime time slot to put this view over.
Which kind of put me off him a lot.

[Serial_Apologist]

Nick Robinson thinks that the very wealthy in the UK pay enough tax, and had a nice prime time slot to put this view over.
Which kind of put me off him a lot.

He totally discredited his impartiality yet again this morning, though exactly how or on what subject I can't recall, given that he does it so often I'd need payment for the amount of monitoring he would incur.

[Lat-Literal]

Nick Robinson thinks that the very wealthy in the UK pay enough tax, and had a nice prime time slot to put this view over.
Which kind of put me off him a lot.

He totally discredited his impartiality yet again this morning, though exactly how or on what subject I can't recall, given that he does it so often I'd need payment for the amount of monitoring he would incur.

Well, I felt it was my duty to include an older white man. It used to be easy - John Timpson, Nick Clarke, Robert Dougall, John Cole etc. etc. And especially Alistair Cooke. Thanks.

[Lat-Literal]

.....I am now replacing Nick Robinson with Mike Embley on the grounds that today's Today programme seems to have replaced the news with health terrorising.

In the first 45 minutes alone:

1. Professional says herbal medication when taken with prescription medication is killing people and making conditions including cancer and HIV worse.
2. Professional says that there are so many obese children now that parents should be given extra votes in elections to cast on behalf of their children.
3. Foreign Secretary says that more money should be paid into the NHS from the Brexit dividend to stop people being left on hospital trolleys.
4. Professional says that more of today's middle aged will have cancer, dementia and arthritis at 65 than was the case with the previous generations.
5. Government to address the handing out of prescription drugs - professional says thousands of people addicted, especially women in their 50s/60s.
6. Interview with Tessa Jowell - ongoing throughout the morning - about her brain cancer and why new cancer treatments aren't accessible on the NHS.

The picture is quite clear. With the system failing so that it is not producing and employing enough medical professionals, they are probably right in claiming that they are inadequately resourced to help many people. The answer is now education of the general public by the media to professional GP level whether they can use the information or not. It is really getting ridiculous. I am very sympathetic to people with illness but this sort of thing will turn legions of the so-called worried well into the worried ill. Then we'll have professionals talking about unfathomable added pressures on the NHS with hours of media coverage on their bemusement in the name of entertainment. Still, the BBC is at least boosting HM's official Opposition.

[ardcarp]

I have the greatest respect for Tessa Jowell, and a heartfelt sympathy for her and her family as she suffers from a form of brain cancer. That said, from 0810 to 0820 this morning, the Today Programme was given over entirely to an interview with her and Nick Robinson. It was a touching interview which I thought NR handled extremely well. BUT but but...this is a News and Current Affairs programme. I rest my case.

(Well, not completely. At my sort of age, friends begin dying off, some with forms of cancer. One friend t the moment is struggling with the advanced stages of multiple myeloma. The son of another friend has lost his hearing, speech, taste, balance from NF2, which is incurable. Words cannot describe the trauma for them and their families, nor the helpless compassion felt for them by their friends. The trouble is, to complain...as I have done...about deeply personal interviews with Well-Known Persons during News and Current Affairs Programmes, makes me sound uncaring. Nothing could be further from the truth. It's just in the Wrong Place, and I can't understand why this has become a trend for the BBC. Is it a cynical ploy to increase listening figures?)