BY MAX GOLDBARTSome of TV’s top journalists have
vented their anger about trying to
report on a landscape in which
politicians are more emboldened
than ever to lie or distort the truth.
Broadcast has analysed TV
news’ relationship with politics
in 2019 via a range of interviews
with the likes of Today host Nick
Robinson, Newsnight presenter
Emily Maitlis and Channel 4 news
editor Ben de Pear.
They fl agged the challenge of
doing their job when politicians
are lying more brazenly than ever
before, driven by the rise of Donald
Trump in the US, the immense
political and public confusion sur-
rounding Brexit and the advent of
social media.
“The shame attached to telling
lies seems to be evaporating,” said
de Pear. “The power and infl uence
of old media and the simplicity of
calling someone out for a lie has
been diluted. Social media, where
much political discourse now plays
out, relies on emotion and the
public now believes the strength of
someone’s emotion rather than the
empirical truth.”
Today’s Robinson said politi-
cians are now more confi dent
in deliberately misleading the
public as their initial statement
will cut through far better than
any corrections they or others
subsequently make. He cited
the example of the £350m ‘Brexit
bus claim’ to make his point.
“The correction only gets
through to the Twitterati,” he
said. “The lesson of the EU
referendum campaign was thatyou can deliberately state some-
thing that is at best arguable, and
at worst untrue.”Misleading the public
With hindsight, Robinson argued,
the BBC should have declined to
interview the likes of Boris Johnson
and Nigel Farage in front of the
notorious £350m bus. Johnson
was recently taken to court over
the allegation that the claim was
false, but the case was thrown out.
Newsnight’s Maitlis said some
politicians are desperate to tell
the truth but that the “current
system doesn’t permit that”,
so they choose to only speakhonestly when off the record. “If
you want to hear the truth then it
tends to be off-record, via text or
WhatsApp,” she added.
“This is really complex for my
job. I’m sitting in a studio with a
guest arguing they can ‘get a deal
through’ and, as soon as the lights
go off, they tell me ‘we’re going to
lose tomorrow – big time’.”But Robert Peston, who helms
his eponymous ITV political chat
show, disagreed. He said he had
conducted “more open, frank and
honest conversations” in the past
nine months with politicians than
ever before, driven by the despera-
tion of the times.
“Because the stakes are so
high and the British people are
pretty desperate, senior politicians
have been extraordinarily frank
on issues from Brexit to anti-
Semitism,” he added. “I’m not
nearly as frustrated as I was 18
months ago.”INTERVIEWS
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Top television journalists warn that political reporting has never been more challenging
Lies, damn lies and TV news
23 August 2019 broadcastnow.co.uk
The power and infl uence of
old media and the simplicity
of calling someone out for
a lie has been diluted
BEN DE PEAR
CHANNEL 4Newsnight: Emily Maitlis said some politicians will only speak honestly when their comments are off the record➤For more analysis, see page 6