Politicians vs Media

The report of the the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee relating to the actions of the PCC with regards to coverage of Prince William's relationship with Kate Middleton and the News of the World's royal vociemail tapping incident continues to build on the theme increasingly put forward by this country's political class.

While stating that there is nothing better than self regulation and that a free press is a cornerstone of democracy the message is becoming ever stronger that standards in the media are simply not good enough and that self-regulations has to be seen to be effective to be credible etc.

In other words we are in a period of very thinly veiled threats to the media to improve its behaviour. After all, falling standards means a less well informed public and would be a threat to democracy.

All this talk, of course, goes back a long way. It is just the latest manifestation of the inherent tension between politics and media. Politicians themselves are to blame for declining standrads of debate beacuse they want to be on TV and TV isn't the place for debate, it's the place for entertainment. They are also the ones who want to avoid discussion and focuse on personalities because this helps them to avoid tackling issues. Politics is not about policy or principal anymore, it's about getting elected.

Meanwhile the media, which is also in business to entertain and make money, and not to inform or educate plays along with the show, focussing on the trivial and cutting resources focsussed on policies and issues.

So why now all this fuss from the politicians? Why was one of Tony Blair's final parting shots aimed at suggesting that something had to be done to help improve the nature of policial discourse in this country? I suppose concerns over the legitamcy of Parliament and the nature of the UK state are reaching a critical point. Perhaps both sides have realised they have pushed things too far. Gordon Brown's first inititiaves seem very much to have been aimed at re-engaging the electorate.

But, I don't see how any of this is going to work. If you regulate the media, it will become dull and no one will watch or listen. How can you regulate content if you are operating ina dregulate dfree market economy. Unfortunately the commercial pressures on media created by the structure in which they operate and the need of politicians to have a high profile means that I can't really see a way for the quality of debate to improve.

What we need is for people to genuinely become interested in politics and policies and that is simply not going to happen when there are no fundamental ideological differences to debate and when life is simply too fast to sit down and think about what you actually might belief or want.