A confrontational approach with politicians rarely gets to the truth
TRUMP’S BID TO CLING TO POWER ILLEGALLY IS THE SHAMELESS LAST GASP OF A DAMAGING PRESIDENCY
WHENEVER we interview a politician or ask questions at the Welsh Government press briefings, we receive furious messages.
These take many forms, but one of the most common complaints thrown at us is that we “went easy” on the person we were interviewing or “failed to hold them to account”.
This is an accusation that is understandable and I totally get it because it is true that we will rarely be aggressive or “finger pointy” when interviewing politicians.
There are, of course, occasions where this is merited – if we’re interviewing someone on a single point and that person is being evasive or duplicitous.
However, this is made all the more effective by the fact that it is the exception, not our standard way of doing things.
The perceived lack of aggressive questioning can be immensely frustrating for people watching, especially when you think the politician in question is doing a rubbish job and making life worse for you and your family. It is actually really frustrating for the journalist as well.
As a reporter, you know the person in front of you may be talking utter garbage. You know they are deliberately dodging the question and not giving a straight answer.
On those occasions, all you want to do is rant and rave at them about how they are an utter failure, a mediatrained robot and exactly the reason why people are turned off politics.
But there is a long list of reasons why we don’t do this and I want to explain why.
I assure you that I am not doing this to defend the Echo or WalesOnline and I am not writing it to be patronising. It’s just in the age of fake news, when it’s hard to know what sources of information to trust, we believe it is important to explain why we go about our journalism in a certain way.
First and foremost, it is about increasing our readers’ understanding of a particular issue. For most of us, the coronavirus crisis has been one of the most confusing, uncertain and scary times in living memory.
People are desperate for information about the virus that is killing them. They also really want as much information about the restrictions as possible, to help plan their lives and stay on the right side of the rules.
This means when a reporter is able to ask a question of First Minister Mark Drakeford they are in a really privileged position.
People all over Wales would dearly like to be able to quiz him about the virus and the response to it.
It could relate to how soon they can visit their mum in a care home or what support their children will get leaving school faced by a bleak jobs market. Maybe they have an underlying health condition and want to know whether they will be asked to shield.
These are really important issues and every time I or one of my colleagues gets to interview the First Minister we are acutely aware this is a real responsibility.
Our overriding priority is to get him to answer questions that our readers want answered. Believe me when I say we couldn’t give a damn about political point-scoring or whose political agenda it serves. We don’t ask questions for politicians, we ask them for our readers.
How much this matters to our readers is in the number of people who read stories which are centred on explanation and understanding.
Stories which are written along the lines of “politician X has failed to do this” are, of course, important stories to write – and we regularly do.
But comparing the number of people who read those stories with articles that are based on “politician X explains whether you can take your children to a play area” is quite staggering, with the latter likely to be read more than the former by several hundred thousand people online.
Helping readers understand what is happening to them, especially during a crisis like Covid, is one of the fundamentals of reporting. It’s why we will often ask an elected representative to explain how a new rule will affect people in Wales, rather than just attacking them for making it.
This brings me on to the second rationale as to why we don’t often ask overtly aggressive questions – it doesn’t work.
What’s the point of asking a question? To hold the interviewee to account and increase your readers’ understanding, right? Well, most politicians in positions of authority are media-trained to within an inch of their lives. If a senior politician doesn’t want to answer a question, they are not going to answer it and no amount of furious questioning is likely to get them to open up.
Sure, they may look a bit silly and you will get loads of people praising you on Twitter, but they will not give you an answer and you end up neither holding them to account nor informing your readers.
If you really want to get people you are interviewing to open up and provide information, you are often far better off putting them at ease. By getting politicians to commit to things, whether this be dates for projects to be finished or testing numbers or targets, you are holding them to account. It is not as eye-catching as simply having a go at someone, but it lays a foundation for accountability.
Public interest journalism is rarely achieved solely by asking a “killer question” in an interview. It involves gathering evidence, speaking to several people and research. It is nowhere near as flashy (or satisfying) as a wellplaced barbed question and takes a hell of a lot more work, but it is more important.
If you need more proof that ranting and raving at politicians is ineffective and just ends up adding to the noise – go and look at any politician’s Twitter account. Every post will be full of abuse, anger and finger-pointing. It has never been easier for people to publicly register their displeasure with their representatives and call out their shortcomings. And yet would anyone say this has made politicians raise their game? Are we currently living in a golden age of political competence?
The other thing to remember about asking questions that are overly confrontational is that you have nowhere to go from there. If, every time you interview someone, you are immediately confrontational no matter what topic you are talking about, when you do call out someone it means nothing because you do it all the time.
Just to be clear, this is in no way to suggest you should give politicians an easy ride. To run as an MP or MS is an act of supreme confidence. You are telling people to vote for you because you alone are best-placed to make their lives better. Such a person deserves unrelenting fair scrutiny to make sure they are living up to their responsibility. But this is better achieved through measured, informed, careful questioning than aggressive “calling out”.
How to approach an interview and a story is always a judgement call. We have daily conversations about how we can cover and have covered issues. I am sure sometimes we get it wrong.
But, always first and foremost, it is representing, informing and entertaining our readers in the best way possible.
WHETHER Donald Trump stays or goes, the damage he’s done to American democracy should never be forgotten.
Faced with eviction from the White House following his defeat to Joe Biden, the President has fallen back on his only tactics – lashing out and filing ludicrous lawsuits.
Even in what appear to be his last days in office, he continues to sow seeds of division, cultivating hatred that has grown in millions of his followers.
Amid his claims of voter fraud, his supporters choose to disregard the clear danger to American democracy he poses, instead using his words to fuel their wild and baseless conspiracy theories.
Trump’s malignant narcissism is creating a precedent politicians and future generations will have to battle for years to overcome.
A leader who cared about upholding American democracy would do all they could to drive home how vital voting procedures and respecting the will of the people are.
They would reassure voters on both sides of the political divide that the nation’s historic electoral system is working as it always has – precinct by precinct, county by county, state by state.
But Trump, as usual, is doing the opposite.
As growing vote totals in crucial battlegrounds show Biden has won, he casts doubt on the honesty of the counts.
“This is a fraud on the American public,” he screamed. “This is an embarrassment to our country. We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election.”
The only embarrassment to America is the man the country voted into the White House four fateful years ago.
“They are finding Biden votes all over the place – in
Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. So bad for our country,” he later moaned.
Any reasonable president would have long since telephoned his opponent, given a gracious concession speech and started to hand over power.
But Trump’s pathetic refusal to accept defeat has held up a transition that will not only hurt America but allies like Britain too.
His baseless, inflammatory comments are designed to stoke up supporters, many of whom think nothing of taking weapons designed for the battlefield out on to the streets.
His petulance will only hinder the new Biden administration, costing lives as coronavirus infection rates soar in the States. It is one thing to vote for a demagogue but another to support one as he tries to destroy the credibility of democracy itself.
His cronies and supporters back his fraudulent pursuit of election rigging claims without any evidence.
But the truth is that he has lost. If the US can calmly face down his last ditch push to hang on to power, there may even be a silver lining to his four-year reign of chaos.
Trump’s attentiongrabbing stunts forced many teenagers and young adults worldwide to pay close attention to politics for the first time in their lives.
He compelled them to understand the complexities and absurdity of politics, creating a new generation of activists to fight on behalf of those less fortunate than themselves.
For now, it’s up to the rest of America to stay patient and let the electoral process do its work, as it does every four years.
In the end, both Trump and Biden will have some gains and some losses. But that’s not fraud, it’s called democracy.
The very thing that put Trump in the White House in the first place.
Trump’s malignant narcissism is creating a precedent...future generations will have to battle for years to overcome...