Is the media ultimately to blame for the Brexit mess?

The blame game is going into overdrive. David Cameron is top of the list of people blamed. Obviously. He couldn’t deal with UKIP or his backbenchers. He panicked and chose a Referendum without thinking it through. What would happen if direct democracy clashed with representative democracy? What if there was a really narrow margin of victory and the country was completely divided?

Then Theresa May: no emotional intelligence, she didn’t reach out, she focused obsessively on the Far Right Brexiteers in her own Party. And, of course, Corbyn. Missing in action from day one. He has never had a clue about the issues and prefers thinking about Palestinians and Venezuela. The classic moment was when there was a huge pro-Referendum rally in London and he was in Switzerland discussing what happened in Chile in the 1970s. The list goes on and on: David Davis and all the other Brexit secretaries, Rees-Mogg and the ERG, Barnier and Juncker…

There is one group who never get blamed, of course. That is the mainstream media, especially TV and radio news programmes. But they must take a large part of the responsibility. Why? First, TV have always wanted Election Debates. Of course, they have. Debates offer good ratings, a lot of excitement. What could be wrong with that? Because you end up with Nick Clegg winning 22% of the vote and 57 seats because he was young, handsome and the TV audience had never really seen him before. The result was a coalition and David Cameron as PM. Did people vote for almost a decade of austerity? Did we vote for university tuition fees? Did we vote for Brexit? How often did these issues come up during the Election debates?  

Second, because when David Cameron decided that a Referendum was the perfect solution to his problems with UKIP and the backbenchers who had destroyed the previous two Tory PMs, the media loved the idea. Even more excitement, a boost in ratings and obviously Remain would win. What they did not do was do enough to scrutinise the idea. What would happen if the result was really close? Or if Leave won? Or should it be built into the Referendum that to be valid it must have a 60-40 majority at least? Or might they be acting out of self-interest, desperate for ratings rather than putting the national interest first?

Third, did the media scrutinise the Referendum campaign properly? Was there foul play? Were there lies and was there enough instant fact-checking? What about apparently trivial issues like the border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic? Could something like that ever matter? What would actually happen if people voted to Leave and there was a clash between the people, pro-Leave, and Parliament, pro-Remain?

Fourth, when Cameron resigned and Johnson and Gove disappeared from the Tory leadership race, and we were left with a two-horse race between Andrea Leadsom  and Theresa May, did they – especially Mrs. May – receive enough proper scrutiny from the media? How impressive was her record as Home Secretary? Did she have the emotional intelligence to build coalitions and get controversial legislation through Parliament? Should a Remainer lead a government committed to Brexit? Once Johnson and Gove had fallen by the wayside and Leadsom was crucified by the media for her remarks about May not having had children, Mrs. May won by default. Was that good enough?

Fifth, having given Mrs. May an easy ride in 2016, the media then gave her a very tough time in the 2017 election, just as the US media did with Hillary Clinton. The media didn’t ask whether there were any similarities here. Was there perhaps an element of misogyny in the way both women were presented? They were both treated as hard-working, competent, but essentially dull. They were not treated as smart, experienced politicians who could master policy detail. Corbyn and Trump, by contrast, who couldn’t master a brief if their lives depended on it, were in their very different ways truly toxic personalities, yet were forgiven because they were new on the scene. They weren’t policy wonks like Ed Miliband or Gordon Brown, they weren’t allegedly unexciting women like Clinton and May. They brought in viewers (Trump, in particular, of course). May tried to come up with a policy for social care. It was a disaster. The media went for her. What was Corbyn’s policy for social care? Does anyone remember? Did he even have one? Does he have one now? Who’s his shadow minister in charge of social care?

Sixth, Brexit. It all became about personalities. Boris, of course. Rees-Mogg. David Davis. Farage. All this sells papers and gets people watching TV News. But it does not inform or educate voters who don’t understand backstops and Irish borders. This is John Birt’s worst nightmare, the bias against understanding in big block capitals.  

Newspapers are losing sales fast. The Today programme has lost almost a million listeners in one year. Newsnight is on its knees. The BBC’s Ten O’Clock News has just lost ten minutes from its slot to make room for the Best of BBC Three. It’s a jungle out there. The question is: Has the desperate fight for ratings and circulation led our media to fail in its primary job and concentrate on personalities, wanting debates, elections and referenda in order to build up their audiences? Have they focused enough on tough issues of policy? Have they given fair coverage of not very charismatic women leaders, going on too much about their shoes and hair and voices rather than what they know? Just asking.