Round and round we go

Everyone I know with a pulse, never mind an ounce of common sense or an ability to think, recognises the pact with the Devil that we all make when it comes to what is proudly referred to by its supporters as “the Fourth Estate” – i.e. the press or media.

We’re in the realms of the trade-off traditionally made between “the freedom of the Press”, the need to hold those in power to account and “giving the people what they want” on the other hand … and the need for some fundamental rights of protection for all of us individually against the wilder excesses and/or indeed possibilities of “the reptiles of Fleet Street” who will stop at little (or nothing) to get a good story – or indeed even a bad one that sells enough newspapers to offset the occasional incoming brickbats of criticism, reprimands and/or penalties and fines that might arise, on the other.

I take as my texts for the day two famous quotes:

American writer, journalist and cultural critic H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) is not just famous for his observation that “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public” but it covers a lot of bases.

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) is known for his dictum “Those who can, do. Those who can’t teach …” but he might as well have added “… or write about it”.

By these, most popular journalists eke out a living, some of them very lucrative.

Step forward in this respect a current ‘star’ of popular British journalism, rent-a-mouth Piers Morgan who over the past couple of years has made a name for himself out of hounding politicians and public figures from a supposed common sense point of view and most recently by criticising everything and everybody he can over the Coronavirus crisis.

No doubt those in journalism would defend his attacks under the “holding those in power to account” heading and/or “giving a voice to the concerns of the average British citizen”.

It’s a defence that stands up, but – as Mr Salter, the subservient foreign editor of The Daily Beast in Evelyn Waugh’s 1938 satirical novel Scoop, used to suggest to his proprietor when disagreeing with him, only “Up to a point, Lord Copper”.

Yesterday on ITV’s breakfast show Good Morning Britain – which he co-hosts with Susanna Reid – Morgan gave a spectacular roasting to the somewhat hapless Work and Pensions Secretary Therese Coffey who had been sent out by to field media criticisms of the Government’s policies and decisions since Day One of the virus outbreak.

It did not make for comfortable viewing – see here for a link to the interview, courtesy of the website of – GOOD MORNING BRITAIN

Now. Hindsight is a wonderful thing and, of course, I have no doubt that Mr Morgan would point out that he is not a politician, nor ever has he claimed he could do (or could have done) a better job than any Government minister – or indeed the Prime Minister – in the current emergency: he’s just doing his job as a journalist and commentator.

My point is that the last statement above could be trotted out by anyone and everyone concerned, including politicians and indeed Government ministers of whatever political colour of creed.

Nobody goes into any career, or walk of life, intending to do a bad job.

We all set out upon our different chosen paths full of good intentions and (one would like to think) the determination to do our best and go as far as we can. Or perhaps, in some cases, where our reserves of it run out, as far as we want or our drive and ambition permit.

And thus we succeed or fail to the extent that our array of talents, experience and competence allow.

It seems to me that our current daily Number 10 press conferences are barely worth the effort from every conceivable angle.

The Government is treading a tightrope of a line between giving out the information, advice and directions that it feels the public needs, would like and can “take” (in terms of its unpleasantness and acceptability).

Arguably, in circumstances such as those we now find ourselves in one can never be quite “direct and straight” from the beginning – and sometimes throughout the entire process – because in a democracy there has to be a degree of ‘consent of the people’ – if only because – as the legal philosopher Hans Kelsen (1981-1973) taught us, a law that nobody is going to obey is by definition a “bad law” and should not be enacted, and/or be allowed to remain in place, because it might undermine “the rule of law” which necessarily relies upon respect for the law.

To make my point: if on Day One of the current crisis Boris Johnson had stood at the Number 10 lectern and told the nation “Look, we’re in a hell of a hole. The medical/scientific advice is that we may lose between 25,000 and 50,000 to this virus; we may have to go into lockdown for between three and five months; loads of you are going to lose your jobs or your livelihoods; and somewhere along the line the medics are going to have to start making hundreds if not thousands of “life or death” decisions, sadly based in part upon the individual patient’s chances of coming out alive …” – what awful possibilities might have occurred?

And then we get the media’s questions during these counter-productive Number 10 press conferences. They’re all trying “to have a go” (with the justification that these are the questions the public want or need answers to) at the Government – but to this onlooker they don’t listen to the answers they get … or even the questions that have been asked previously.

Yesterday this reached a new height – or should that be depth – when Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak and his medical/scientific advisers were pressed on the point as to why they couldn’t organise things so that the daily deaths reported (by the Health authorities) did not also include the Office of National Statistics (ONS) data of total deaths recorded in the country.

The implication (criticism) underlying the question was that the Government was deliberately reporting things this way in order to ‘hide’ from the public how bad the overall numbers, including those occurring in care homes and at home, really were.

Not only had the answer to this question already been given earlier in the press conference, it remained the same answer to the same question that had already been asked twice last week!

As the medical/scientific advisers have been saying for several week now, the “death number” given out at 4.00pm or 5.00pm on behalf of the Health authorities every day is that of “deaths in hospital due to Coronavirus”, which are automatically sent into the Health authorities (along with a lot of other data) as they happen.

Separately, the ONS figures reflect the number of all deaths registered in the UK on a certain day, wherever they occur and irrespective of whether the cause of death was Coronavirus or any other.

For obvious practical reasons, these cannot be produced until every doctor certifying a death has completed the formalities and sent in the forms etc., which then need to be studied and checked. This process takes time – which is why (on average), the ONS figures are issued six or seven days after the date of death.

So yesterday’s hack asking why the Government couldn’t announce the total number of deaths registered on the same day as the “numbers dying of Coronavirus in hospital” knew the answer to his question before he even asked it.

Which is why yesterday we had to watch the spectacle of the Minister and his medical/scientific advisers, dealing with the query with all due courtesy and respect, giving the same answer they’d already given perhaps four or five times previously over the weeks.

And then probably getting silent or other criticism from cynical onlookers like me because they’re wasting the Great British Public’s time by repeating the politico-speak guff they’ve already trotted out before!