Interesting – how do you define ‘politicians’?

There was someone from OccupyLSX on the radio this morning who made factually incorrect statements which weren’t challenged – are they not just as ‘political’?

>Doing so carries a high risk that they will just spout idiotic untruths; see also Chris Grayling’s weird invocation of the SWP or Nadine Dorries, passim.

On that one, he seems to have been right to invoke the far left as driving some of these, but wrong to limit it to the SWP, though the Telegraph linked up some names with some specific protests:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9105983/Tiny-band-of-left-wing-radicals-bring-jobs-policy-to-its-knees.html

and I’d be interested in any comments.

To my eye the groups driving it seem to be much the same as all the other anticuts things since it started.

(Hi Sally – just a capitalist Brownshirt breezing in to hijack the thread)

Didn’t Michael Portillo stop being a politician ages ago? Oh yes… he retired in 2005. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Portillo

This is a really strange idea, especially when presented on a web site that claims to be somehow “liberal”. Liberty is about freedom. Freedom of expression, among other things. Having some group of people – apparently very arbitrarily selected: what is the level of “politician” someone needs to be in order to be banned from TV – excluded is directly conflicting with the very ideas of free society.

I can see that you’d like to ban prominent conservative politicians. I bet you’d be screaming if someone suggested similar bans for left-of-centre politicians.

As said, a really strange idea.

Which is a reason why politicians should not be given airtime.

No it’s not.

But it is a reason why the BBC should hire smarter presenters.

many political issues are ones of science rather than values.

I think that’s wrong and dangerous. Politics invariably involves both.

Not that most social science is ‘science’ anyhow.

You don’t need a politician to get a daft or warped view. There’s always Mad Mel.

And there are groups like the TPA who are pursuing a political agenda.

He’s a tory. Rules don’t apply to tories or Royals. They can do what they like. Now you and I?!………..!that’s a different matter.

pjt: I can see that you’d like to ban prominent conservative politicians.

your credibility would be helped greatly if you didn’t betray the fact you didn’t read the piece properly

Is it just TV politicos should be banned from, or, in the fullness of time will the ban extend to printed media and t’web – I mean how can the propaganda war be maintained without the proper ability to ‘manufacture of consent’?

I share your frustration, but as Flowerpower suggests, isn’t it a matter of the quality of presenters? I’ve heard rubbish from a variety of people on the BBC that passes with a knowing nod from a clueless presenter. Typically this occurs on programmess like Broadcasting House, The One Show or You & Yours. Two of these are fluff shows intended more to entertain than inform, but You & Yours is meant to be serious. It always seems to be on when I turn on the radio and is presented by utter dimwits. Doesn’t this exemplify the problem?

I don’t want to ban politicians from the BBC but if they say something wrong I want them to be challenged. If they know they’ll be caught out and perhaps look bad they’ll be more careful with their words.

Didn’t the BBC already do something similar when they “un-invited” Alex Salmond from the pre-and during match discussions of the recent Scotland vs. England rugby game at Murrayfield?

It didn’t go down too well North of the border, and provoked quite a furore when Big Eck described the BBC apparachik who made the decision a gauleiter.

Banning politicians from talk shows (or indeed commenting on sporting events) is a barmy idea, unless you have real concerns about the free press being manipulated. It pays to be vigilant of course, but we’re hardly in Putin or Assad territory vis a vis press freedom.

All politician appearances should go hand in hand with an expert who has had time to assess what they are about to say. It would soon stop politicians lying on the air if they an expert was going to be given the last word on why they’re misleading us.

Kind of like fact-check during broadcast, if you will.

To be fair, some MPs are actually experts on their pet issue, John Redwood on right-wing economics, Lembit on the asteroid threat, etc. But entirely agree that people shouldn’t be invited onto BBC factual programmes as interviewees, simply because they are well-known MPs or ex-MPs (Edwina C springs to mind). Elsewhere – http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/the-lay-scientist/2012/jan/26/1 – Martin Robbins has argued for more scientists to be on news programmes/Question Time panels.

Isn’t it funny that the Right are always bleating about ‘politicians’ and how they interfere too much in people’s lives and that they have too much power in general, then when somebody suggest that they are excluded from certain aspects of debate, then that becomes ‘censorship’.

The Right despises science, facts and evidence that happens to contradict their ideology and they can never allow a programme were the facts are given straight without a scumbag making shit up.

If the BBC makes a programme where no Tory is allowed to tell lies without challenge, the Tories cry ‘bias’. If the BBC had to question every lie a Tory ever made, the entire programme would be wasted because it would be all about tearing apart a fucking a liar and not about anything else.

14 yup that sums it up nicely.

I think you have to take this in the context that the BBC is not there to inform but to entertain. Following this, politicians that turf up to chat shows or even formal political interviews very rarely get challanged even if they talk complete crap.
None of this is to do with fair play in my opinion.It is more to do with a ruling conservative ideology which deliberately fails to join any empirical dots.The BBC ,being part of the state apparatus, is key in this process.

“This can lead to what Paul Krugman called “opinions differ on shape of planet” journalism. If one party says the world is flat, and another says it isn’t, you do not have a reasoned debate, but just one moron and one non-moron.”

A problem arises when each side believes the other to be the flat earthers. As with economics – where ‘expert’ opinion is political almost by definition – and many other social sciences (/’sciences’).

In fact it’s extremely rare for significant policy debates to be about the fundamental evidence base itself rather than about the applicability of differing values thereto. Or, more cynically, about who can afford more experts.

The reason we need to hear what politicians think as much as we need to hear facts is because they are in power, and they exercise that power base on their opinions rather than reality.

Like journalists, in fact.

They should be challenged, not censored.

this is one of Chris’ silliest posts imho. The telly is full of people spouting crap unchallenged, activists and pundits of all stripes. We have to vote for these people so we need to get a look at them.

[14] ‘when somebody suggest that they are excluded from certain aspects of debate, then that becomes ‘censorship’ – it is censorship, and once banned from any media outlet how will we be able to ask pretend hard questions about the invasion of iran, or whatever new disasters they have planned for us?

@ 5 Flowerpower

“No it’s not.

But it is a reason why the BBC should hire smarter presenters.”

Agreed.

“I think that’s wrong and dangerous. Politics invariably involves both.

Not that most social science is ‘science’ anyhow.”

Don’t quite agree with that last sentence, but I think you have the right sentiment here. The last thing we want is to encourage TV programs to wheel out someone experienced in their field, have them state an opinion with which equally experienced people might disagree, then go “Right, case closed, he’s an expert”.

“Which is a reason why politicians should not be given airtime. Doing so carries a high risk that they will just spout idiotic untruths”

But its ok for them to run the country? Lets just keep them off tv so we dont have to feel embarrassed when witnessing there incompitence? YOU FUCKING IDIOT.

Shatterface @ 18

They should be challenged, not censored.

Yes, but the minute you actually Challenge a Tory, that stops being journalism and becomes Left Wing bias. Once a Tory has lied, that lie becomes truth and anyone who has the temerity to question that original lie becomes a de facto Leftie/Socialist Worker, Trot, or whatever.

These cunts are simply not interested in truth, because the truth normally contradicts their vast array of prejudices. Look at the Laws of Physics; the Tories want the laws of physics to be rewritten in order to conform to their ideas of supply and demand.

If that is how they are with natural forces, then what fucking chance do we have on whether or not ‘workfare’ is a sensible policy or not?

So when it comes to a talk show, phone in or whatever the vermin need to removed from the process because they just spoil the programme. Digby Jones, Tory in spirit, even if he was briefly a ‘Labour’ minister gets about half of an edition of ‘Question Time’ to himself because if Dimbley attempts to prevent him from speaking the Tories will call ‘bias’. Same with Starkey this week. That obnoxious little prick is supposed to be on this week and he will outright lie at every opportunity. Dimbley cannot challenge him because to do so will get the BBC privatised and the whole programme would be pointing out the downright lies Starkey has told.

A&E @ 20

it is censorship, and once banned from any media outlet how will we be able to ask pretend hard questions

Yes, we need to pin these bastards down but that requires a more robust forum than a chat show or phone in, because the presenters simply do not have the facts or the time to call them on their lies.

@ 12. Lee Griffin

That was my first thought, too. Alexander Armstrong fronts two different quiz programmes where he has a side-kick at a laptop who has ‘data’ at his fingertips. I’m not sure why a similar thing can’t happen with political/economic data other than it being unusual for political television.

The subjects of ‘Broadcasting House’ and similar discussion formats are known in advance and as they’re topical, the subjects are already being scrutinised elsewhere to provide extra sets of data that might go against superficial or weasel-like readings of ‘official’ data.

I’d much rather this, no matter who was in government, as I’d rather my facts were actually facts rather than ‘interpretations’ &c. Tories shouldn’t be against this as they were electioneering with transparency, open government and the like (except when it comes to NHS Risk Registers &c., obviously).

A format like this would make me want to see more political television and even more politicians, not less, as is being suggested. I enjoy watching politicians sweat bullets and being called out on what they say, whatever their political stripe and hue. If the politics as are being presented actually stand-up, no politician would have anything to fear.

Although, I wouldn’t mind seeing politicians barracked for ‘repetition’, ‘deviation’, ‘hesitation’ and the like either.

It does seem a bizarre suggestion. But I would like to see less MPs and ministers and shadow cabinet people on TV. I nearly caught Liam Fox on TV yesterday and it was a great impetus to quickly turn it off and go out.
I don’t mind Portillo actually. He’s not reading off any party script like current MPs, even if he is a Tory. But both sides are as bad as each other. Their job is to battle each other and BS the public. It’s a pain.
Chuka Umunna is being slightly annoying at the moment, as he pops up so often and is always so carefully on-message. You’d think he was looking to climb up the greasy career pole or something.
Andy Burnham too. He might be an OK bloke, but he’s a bit of a drone merchant.
I have no time for Tories, but I listened to the Chris Grayling interview linked to in this piece, and he didn’t sound that bad. I don’t think he was being particularly deceitful. Compared to David Lammy’s ”open letter” to Boris Johnson …. which was so disingenuous and insulting to the general public, but was flagged up on LC as something positive.

And if we don’t have MP’s on, who is better? People from the left’s favourite eco-campaigns (for example)? Plane Stupid, Climate Rush etc. They are far more dishonest than Chris Grayling was there.

Let’s just be truthful and admit that meaningful political debate is just about impossible, because everyone spins and everyone is too dishonest.

@129
Have to agree with Luis here. Unless it means banning the Taxpayers Alliance, in which case I’ll happily chuck the baby out with the bathwater.

Not only would I invite more politicians onto discussion programmes, I’d wire their knackers to a lie detector and a car battery.

I love coming here, reminds me, in case I ever waver, why I stopped being a bit of a leftie. Anyone who disagrees with us is a right wing liar, reading people like Jim and Sally I don’t know whether to be depressed by the bigotry or sympathetic at the lack of security revealed by the inability to cope with living in the same world as people who disagree with them.

The BBC does have self-defined “experts” on its talk shows. They are usually the most ill-informed, illogical and generally idiotic people on the shows.

I enjoy watching politicians on TV. Not all of the time or even very often, and watching is usually better than listening. Credit, thus, to radio interviewers who communicate the body language of interviewees without saying anything.

Observing politicians helps me to blunder through life. The practice helps me to spot lying sharpies who deliver bare faced untruths. It also assists in identifying buffoons who strongly believe something but lack the evidence to support their arguments. Then there is logic: listening to a prepared argument and simultaneously identifying its flaws is excellent preparation for going to work.

Chris Dillow may be correct that political discussion programmes do not directly inform viewers and that they are opinion slots, where we may or may not hear views with which we agree. But factual programmes and documentaries raise despair in me too. When I watch or listen to something that I really, really know about, somebody usually shatters my illusions by saying something that is flat out wrong.

This is an odd argument. Whatever you think of them, politicians are our democratically elected representatives, and surely having them visible and open to questioning in public forums is a good thing. This is how the public are able make informed choices about who to vote for. The BBC, as a public service broadcaster has a particularly strong role to play in this area. To keep politicians out of public view because they ‘might lie’ is absurd, and would not only stifle democratic debate, but undermine the whole idea of a liberal democracy. It is the responsibility of the BBC interviewer to know their facts beforehand and to challenge politicians on any inaccuracies in what they say.

The distinction you set up between facts and ideology is also a false and over simplistic one. Statistics can be manipulated to fit most ends and experts draw different ideological conclusions from the so called ‘facts’ all the time. There is really no such thing as a totally neutral ‘expert.’

“There is really no such thing as a totally neutral ‘expert.’”

Does that worry you when you visit your GP?

Given the chance and context, we surely ought to welcome the opportunity to hear “experts” set out and defend their conflicting positions but that means recognising an end to deferential politics and, arguably, accepting that coalition governments are beneficial because arguments about policy are forced into the open.

I doubt that view is widely shared and the referendum on electoral reform decisively affirmed popular support for first past the post elections, which tends to promote the two-party system along with the implication that one or the other must be correct. We need to reflect that while two conflcting opinions can’t both be correct, logically, they can both be wrong.

Hmm.

What we really need is a high standard of debate on these programmes. It’s difficult for me to clarify as my understand of the rules of rational debate are far from perfect but I’ll try.

An example would be how Nick Griffin appeared on question time. While it was emotionally satisfying to see how people came out against a purveyor of foul views, it was intellectually depressing. No-one bothered to question areas of policy, evidence against racist claims or really drive home the fact that such unpleasant, racist policy has very poor basis in fact and far more basis in playing to people’s fears. It could have easily been done, but instead it seemed to be a point scoring exercise to see who could be the most horrified.

As someone earlier in the comments pointed out, it’s because the BBC cares about entertaining over informing, and informing can only exist if it has some kind of entertainment over the top of it. It’s like only allowing healthy food if it has sugar and fat sprinkled on it.

As it stands, most TV formats these days work in the same way as tabloids. There seems to be no appeal to intellectual delight in understanding and crafting well thought out arguments with solid evidence to help understand our world better, which is what the fundements of politics could and should be.

We need proper rules of debate where people’s views can be held up to high levels of scrutiny, especially those in power. I would be very interested to see something like an audience of experts in various fields questioning politicians on areas of policy and where their views stem from, and allow them only to ask questions relevant to their fields, with a good moderator. Maybe it would be too tedious, and arguments would be built around the minutae of specific research quarrels, but I would find that infinitely better compared to the levels of emotive dross that we’re forcefed under the guise of ‘balance’.

We have a huge range of different shows on the BBC that can be broadcast. I see no reason why a new one cannot be made with a higher focus on requiring evidence and expert opinion, and if people believe that this would automatically slide into some kind of ridiculous Stalinist censorship regime, then I recommend reading this first – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope, and to please, for the sake of allowing our understanding to expand from our restrictions and the betterment of people, to stop overreacting and give it a chance.

you do not have a reasoned debate, but just one moron and one non-moron.

Suppose the moron is you ?

I am 100% in favour of politicians being allow on Jeremy Kyle.

From A Cautionary Tale – the Memoirs of a BBC Producer(Rapscallion Press, 2012):

In the Spring of 2007, Evan Davis, Stephanie Flanders, Paul Mason and I were summoned to a meeting in the imposing office of Tristram Graham, the Controller of Editorial Currents (CoEC), on the sixth floor of the White City Media Centre.

Tris was looking grim. “We’ve got to stop having these Keynesians on”, he snapped. “There’s a consensus in favour of Neo-Liberalism stretching from the IMF, via Chicago University, the EU and even through the post-Communist world.
We have to accept that scientific consensus: Keynesians are Flat Earthers, totally discredited. They are herewith banned from the airwaves, like climate sceptics.”

Evan and Stephanie looked at one another. For a moment I thought they would object, but ambition got the better of them. I have to admit, it got the better of me too.

Only Paul Mason was moved to object. “What if in a year’s time the big investment banks, the pillars of Capitalism, start falling like ninepins and the world plunges into recession?”, he asked.

My, how we all laughed! Even CoEC, who had never been known to laugh before.

It’s only by hearing people on TV and radio that you get to judge them.
How are you supposed to know how bad (or sometimes good) a person is if you don’t hear them being themselves? I just heard Shami Chakrabarti call someone who doesn’t support her view completely, as being ”a human rights skeptic”.
I have lost respect for her because I’ve heard her speaking as she does.

Radio Five Live has too many interuptions and is always trying to hurry people up to move on to the next part of the programme. As does Newsnight.

@28

So you abandoned your existing philosophy simply because some off its adherents annoyed you? And what new view have you adopted where everyone who believes it is a reasonable and courteous debater?

Thornavis @ 28:

I’d say the best reason for someone of right of centre views to come here is that we can all learn something from those we disagree with (bigots like Sally and Jim excepted). Though there there’s much silly stuff, many of the contributors and commenters here make interesting points; and engaging with them can make one’s own arguments sharper and more nuanced.

@ 39 TONE

Well said!

No one is suggesting that MPs and the like should be banned from the TV and radio or that we should never hear them speak, what we are saying is that talk show type programmes/phone ins are not the platform for such people.

It is far too easy for someone to appear on ‘Nicky Campbell’, spout lies and go unchallenged. The format of the show is far too compact to tear apart any lies and the fluffy presenters not even have a clue of the subject matter, because they normally interview Brad Pitt, Sheryl Cole or the latest non entity ‘reality TV’ star. Shelia Fogerty and Nicky Campbell are simply not equipped to deal with Nick Clegg, David Cameron or any other Tory weasel and they normally run rings round them.

Take today for example. Radio five had a discussion on ‘Workfare’. So what is the point of that? They don’t look at the facts, have experts on to look at the evidence. They had an awful ‘reality woman’ (peace and blessings on her name, it is the BBC after all, all hail the reality star) and a few half-witted Tories screaming on the phone.

Nicky Campbell was unable to pin her down on anything because it is a phone in and she was allowed to get away with murder. A dumb ignoramus who believes that unemployment is a phenomena of 1997, but hey, she is a reality star and her opinions are more important than history. If you cannot believe someone from ‘the apprentice’ then who the fuck can you believe?

Obviously having a life, I never get to hear the whole programme. However, the only two calls worth a fuck I heard were the guy who claimed (no proof) that a major (unnamed, but we can guess) supermarket were using this course as a source of cheap labour and another guy who said he was using this scheme to supplement his recruitment process. Neither of which is the declared point of the scheme.

Obviously, a real presenter would have zeroed in on this and teased out the facts, but Nicky was completely out of his depth and was forced to ‘move on’ to ‘Clive from Norwich’ (or whoever) who claimed that his brother in law lies in bed all day and …
…well another completely useless anecdote about something or other.

At the end of the programme we learned that dumb fuckwitted Tories think it a great idea and there are enough jobs if only people put down their play stations and look. We knew that anyway.

So, what was the point of attempting to cram a highly complex issue like unemployment into a phone in?

@ 41 Jim

I’d certainly agree that it’s dodgy to invite a single politician (with no equivalent representation from the other side) onto a chat show used to having celeb guests and asking them difficult questions like “Do you think it’s important to be yourself”? On the other hand, getting a reality star on and letting them rant vapidly about some political topic or other is not the same as condoning their views. It’s a risk if your format involves asking people what they think about the issues of the day.

@38
Don’t be silly, I didn’t abandon my philosophy ( not that I had one ) just because some people annoyed me. That was just part of the process of discovering that things I used to accept no longer made sense, people like Jim and Sally annoy me wherever they’re found and whatever their politics.
@39
I quite agree and that’s how I’ve come to change my views on a variety of things over the years and why I still look at sites like this to get another opinion on things but when I see so much ranting from the left and childish rage at the coalition simply for not being socialist it doesn’t impress.

CG @ 40: Thank you.

Thornavis @ 43: Agreed; so stick around.

@ 43

“people like Jim and Sally annoy me wherever they’re found and whatever their politics.”

Likewise.

“He claimed that the fact that 1% of taxpayers pay 28% of income tax is evidence that the tax system is progressive.

This is just plain wrong – not as a matter of opinion, but of fact and logic. Yes there’s other evidence that income tax is mildly progressive, but the share of tax paid by the top 1% is irrelevant.”

Am trying to understand what you mean here. What is factually and logically wrong with the claim?

You follow your assertion of the wrongness of the claim by saying two things;
1.there is other evidence that income tax is mildly progressive.
2.the share of tax paid by the top 1 % is irrelevant.

The fact that there is “other evidence” of progressiveness implies that the claim itself. represents evidence .

What is the tax paid by the top 1% irrelevant to? Irrelevant to the claim? to the factual or logical wrongness of the claim?

I am honestly not sure what you are saying here. I ask again what is factually wrong, or logically wrong with the claim?

Thanks.