Last week Jeremy Paxman received an Outstanding Contribution award from the Royal Television Society at their TV Journalism Awards. Paxman used his acceptance speech to give a characteristically idiosyncratic rant on the current state of journalism.
What Paxman seemed particularly worried about is the fact that many areas of our public life, such as council meetings and court hearings, are often unreported. He went on to claim that even debates in Westminster are not analysed and recorded as they should be and that there is likely to be, in his words, “f@#% all” reporting on the imminent Spring Budget.
He has a point. In my opinion, we have got to this stage for two main reasons. Firstly, local and regional newspapers no longer have the staffing resources to cover their patch as well as they used to. When I started out in local government PR many years ago, there would always be at least one journalist at every committee meeting held at the town hall. Some reporters would regularly hang around in the pubs frequented by councillors and officials in the hope of picking up gossip or scandal. That certainly doesn’t happen today with few news outlets even having a dedicated local government reporter.
Secondly, the media does seem to me to be chasing an audience by dumbing down. Look at the local paper in any town or city in the UK and you will find that almost every story is about either crime, football or celebrity gossip. It’s not unusual to find all three of those elements in the same story. Often local newspapers tell their readers what they want to know rather than what they need to know.
Local newspapers used to have an important pace in their communities. They reported on how decisions were made, promoted sporting and cultural events, encouraged local businesses and often provided a forum for debate.
The decline of the local press means that most people now get their local news from Facebook and other social media channels. Sadly much of the news content that we read online hasn’t been checked for accuracy and rarely puts the story into any context.
Does it matter? I think it does. If politicians (local and national), regulatory bodies, courts and such like are not being accurately and regularly reported on then how can they truly be held accountable for their actions?
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