Friday, 3 October 2008

Close Newsnight, save millions

Posted By: Iain Martin at Oct 2, 2008 at 08:33:32 [General]
Posted in: Politics , Three Line Whip

Now that a possible Tory government is looking for spending cuts, it could do worse than look to the BBC. If massive spending reductions were demanded it might be forced to close Newsnight. This would not only save money, it would improve journalism.

Last night's edition was a disgrace. The first 20 minutes were spent on wittering about something which hadn't happened yet, the vote in the Senate, and then a pointless interview with the French finance minister on the financial crisis. The programme's reporting of this important subject is going round and round in ever decreasing circles.

Finally a report on David Cameron's speech arrived, and it suggested that Newsnight had missed the point. Michael Crick, the political editor, then popped up and it seemed that he hadn't got a clue what the point was either. It was a seven out ten speech, he said gravely, and Brown was a 7.5 out of ten last week. What does that mean?

But perhaps the Newsnight team had their mind on much more important matters, namely the culmination of the excruciating "Place that Face" game in which passing politicians pin their party's post-1945 leaders on a board as Crick makes lame observations. At least Paxo is openly contemptuous of this rubbish.

Then a panel discussion followed, during which only Danny Finkelstein attempted to provide a serious analysis of the speech. He was blocked because these panel discussions the programme hosts are far too fixed on the spindoctor end of the process, endlessly asking how an event played rather than what it meant. There is even someone on the panel who says, at any opportunity, that she was "the Liberal Democrats Head of Communications on Black Wednesday". Talk about having a ring side seat for the great events in world history.

Cameron's speech was about ideas and quite traditionally conservative ideas at that. He discussed themes such as sound money, personal responsibility, low taxation, social reform and civic engagement that does not have to include the interference of the State, and argued that these values and beliefs are a better basis for enduring this crisis and building recovery.

This needs held up to the light because it is an important argument by someone who will probably get a chance to try it out for real in Number 10. Disagree with the premise, deconstruct the argument, counter it, but don't try to pretend that it is not significant.

Why does Newsnight do this? Surely it is not stuffed full of Communists? On the evidence of last night, it seems there is not a soul on the programme (or if there is he was off last night) who can comprehend conservative arguments. And why should they be able to? In certain parts of the BBC are people who never encounter anything which is at odds with their liberal-left orthodox world view. If you were one of those people, you would really have had no idea what Cameron was going on about for most of his speech.

And that would be absolutely fine, if they went out on their own, launched a liberal-left TV channel called, say, Newsnight, and found advertisers or subscribers to cover their costs. But why should the rest of us pay for it via our license fee?

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Posted by Britannia Radio at 09:29