poor quality of debate

By alice | February 23, 2007

nanny mcphee

Emma Thompson: journalist

Was just mistakenly listening to a BBC Radio 4 show in which actress Emma Thompson reported on the phone from South Africa about terrible conditions being experienced by women working on farms that sell fruit and vegetables to UK supermarket chain Tesco. She said Tesco should try harder to make sure the farms they have contracts with treat their workers humanely.

Then the man from Tesco came on, and sounded slightly annoyed and completely baffled. He said they already agreed, and already do everything Ms Thompson said they don’t do, her information was false and Tesco was ruthlessly demanding of all its farms already.

Surely it is possible for journalists at least to check their facts and ensure that their interviewees are faced with those facts, even if they choose to ignore them? It is most confusing to listen to something like this where there is no consensus even about what planet we are living on. I found this very bizarre and can only conclude that journalistic standards are not being enforced by whoever is paying the You and Yours or maybe it was Woman’s Hour people. Perhaps Ms Thompson was in error, as she is not famous for being a rigorous journalist herself.

My conclusion is that most Radio 4 listeners are not that bothered. BBC radio magazine shows probably aren’t where anybody goes to get facts. Arguments are more the point at the BBC than facts. I could hear every single one coming before the interviewer said them. Zzzz. Some people love arguments; I find them intensely annoying.

2 Comments »

2 Responses to “poor quality of debate”

Theocritus Says:
February 25th, 2007 at 6:37 pm

I’ve found that facts are indeed weak foils. We depend on engineers to get their facts right because down deep inside we know that if the engineer doesn’t understand the airplane, if will fall from the sky and kill us, if it gets up in the first place.

And this makes the constant jeering at geeks seem rather mean. After all, geeks make the modern world. I’m proud to be one, and have even coined the term giquoiserie to describe the maze of wires and microwaves that infest my cave, so powerful that I alter the courses of 747s away from the fastest route over fly-over country. I do tremble at the thought of an emergency landing in my back 40 of a Gulfstream with Laurie David headed to Vail, though. Well, that would kill the weeds.

Perhaps Mr. Darwin has something to day about this. If a geek is wrong, you die and instantly. If a political commentator is wrong, say Karl Marx or the thick (the nice explanation) Ms. Thompson is wrong, the day of reckoning is much longer off, and it’s harder to make people understand that bad ideas are just as deadly as bad science but it takes a lot longer for their fatality to become obvious and this is the day of an attention span forged by MTV, and who can expect reason from people schooled in (unearned but granted) self-esteem?

We believe what we want to believe. I know that from my practice. P. T. Barnum’s name is still famous for it. Savaronola knew it. How many Muslims are there on earth?

And in a parting shot. I love the Internet and the access to information, but have you considered just how useful it is to crackpots? There is no idea so idiotic that someone somewhere is not ranting about it, to be found in three seconds by that modern miracle Google. Technology is after all neutral.

Tammy Says:
February 26th, 2007 at 4:58 pm

Hi, Alice! I hope you’re having a productive and pleasant day.

Impertinent question: Have you managed to program this blog so that as Miss Thompson becomes a better journalist her looks (in the above photo) improve?