Getting the message across

They say you should never believe everything you read in the newspapers, although in today’s post-truth world I wonder whether you can believe anything. We all suffer from various cognitive biases and tend to believe those elements of the media which affirm our own prejudices. Bearing this in mind, I was gratified to read the headline in today’s Irish Times, pointing out that the “British government realises Brexit is a mistake”. It goes on to quote John Callinan, the second secretary-general at the Department of the Taoiseach, who pointed out that the UK government is now “slowly” beginning to understand that Brexit is “an act of great self-harm.”

Whilst I did point this out last weekend (here) it is gratifying to hear others say what I – and most of the economics profession – have been saying for the past four (and more) years. The worrying thing, of course, is that the article uses the adjective “slowly” to describe the UK government’s dawning realisation of the scale of the challenge. If that is indeed true, it is not the cognitive biases of our elected representatives we should be worried about, but their cognitive processing power. Indeed, there was a total absence of leadership during the referendum campaign with no politician daring to make a coherent statement about the benefits of EU membership which was able to tug at the heartstrings in the way that the Leave campaign managed. There was very much a sense that politicians faced an onslaught from a press which seemed only to be interested in making the case for Brexit. To put it simply, it was as if we lived through a period when rationality broke down.

It is not the first time we have been through this. I was reminded of the article by Chris Dunkley, the Financial Times TV critic in 1997, who described the TV coverage of the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales by highlighting that the British public had engaged in some kind of collective breakdown. He pointed out that although 60% of the British population tuned in to watch it on TV, that still meant a sizeable minority of 40% did not, but given the way in which it was reported one would have thought that everyone was glued to their TV. Unfortunately I no longer have a copy of the article to hand, so I am quoting from memory, but it got to the heart of the way in which events are distorted by the popular press so that it becomes part of the accepted narrative.

In a similar vein I was struck by a paper I came across recently which looked at the way in which Jeremy Corbyn has been portrayed by the British press. The study, produced last July by Bart Cammaerts, Brooks DeCillia, João Magalhães and César"Jimenez-Martínez of the LSE’s Department of Media and Communications (here), pointed out that “Corbyn was represented unfairly by the British press through a process of vilification that went well beyond the normal limits of fair debate and disagreement in a democracy … He was also systematically treated with scorn and ridicule in both the broadsheet and tabloid press in a way that no other political leader is or has been … The result has been a failure to give the newspaper reading public a fair opportunity to form their own judgements about the leader of the country’s main opposition.”

As one who does not have much time for Corbyn’s policies on the whole, this is a very astute observation. The paper goes on to point out that “UK journalism played an attack dog, rather than a watchdog, role. This is unhealthy from a democratic point of view and poses serious ethical questions as to the role of the media in a democracy, especially when it concerns the legitimate contestation of the Government of the day.” Such behaviour was also evident in the run-up to the 2015 general election, when Labour leader Ed Miliband was portrayed as “Red Ed”, a dangerous socialist who would damage the national interest (not, of course, like the current government whose Brexit policy should in no way be seen as damaging to the national interest).

I have no wish go further into the debate about the role of the media where the likes of Simon Wren-Lewis have discussed it in much detail (here). But we should be very aware of uncritical acceptance of policies such as Brexit (or indeed Trumpism) which make seductive promises which cannot be met. It is incumbent on all of us (politicians included) to act responsibly in the face of some of the wilder policy claims in the press (or indeed social media). Otherwise, it will not just be politicians who have a slow dawning realisation that their positions are untenable. Once voters realise it, they may become even angrier than they are now, and that would definitely not be good for our democracy.