Whose news is it anyway?

In these strange times there are moments when you find yourself shaking your head wondering just what the hell is going on. My son is currently staying with me and scarcely a day goes by when, reacting to the latest news from the United States about the antics of Donald Trump, he doesn’t comment “The world’s gone mad, hasn’t it, Dad?” and sometimes I think he may be on to something.

President Trump has at least prompted the world’s media to look to its laurels. If you take a reasonable (or is that ‘liberal’?) view of his modus operandi, he seems to have an extraordinary capacity to ‘live in a world of his own’, make the wildest statements and accusations and – when the media (as it delights in doing) points out the supposed errors, inconsistencies, hypocrisies and mendacities he’s peddling – dismisses everything they say as ‘fake news’.

The way he sees it, anyone who agrees with him is simply stating the true facts: anyone who criticises him, however, is a dastardly agent of ‘fake news’.

You’d like to reach for the phrase ‘You couldn’t make it up’ … but then, of course, in actual fact, you could. Arguably, President Trump does. The way I see America, apart from PBS and similar organisations, most of media is commercially owned and transparently so – thus (depending upon your political viewpoint) you can either regard Fox News as an instrument providing the unadulterated truth … or alternatively a television version of a right-wing tabloid rag that exists to do no more nor less than advance the influence and commercial success of its owner(s) on a daily basis.

Here in the UK – with the BBC’s charter and sundry other moral and legal imperatives notionally imposing an obligation upon all media organs including the Rust to air (or perhaps that should be ‘pay lip service to’?) both sides of every argument – we like to think that our news and current affairs outlets offer a ‘balanced’ view of the world. We may or may not be correct in sentimentally holding to that old-fashioned view. We could be kidding ourselves.

I’m only mentioning all this because yesterday – I don’t know if you did this – in passing I watched or read with vague fascination the British media’s coverage of the arrival of HMS Queen Elizabeth, the Royal Navy’s new aircraft carrier, at its home base port of Portsmouth.

What struck me as I did so was the coverage’s relationship with the fundamental issues surrounding news (and ‘fake news’) that the advent of President Trump has inadvertently raised.

I’m not suggesting that there are conspiracies at work, but you know (or can imagine) how such things can go.

Yesterday was a huge opportunity for the Ministry of Defence, the Government and most particularly the Royal Navy to gain for themselves some positive publicity. No doubt the brass hats and their public relations advisers, press officers and strategists will have been working for months upon a press/publicity ‘roll out’ of epic proportions.

Senior Royal Navy officers will have been ‘media trained’ and made available both for ‘background information briefings’ and then stock ‘question and answer’ interviews with breakfast TV and radio presenters on the day of HMS Queen Elizabeth’s arrival at Portsmouth. Press and media packs extolling the virtues of the Royal Navy’s latest pride and joy will have been issued to every journalist in the land who might possibly need one. As little as possible will have been left to chance. The vessel itself will have been cleaned from top to bottom, with the ship’s company given orders to appear immaculately standing to attention as it creeps past the crowded quayside with Royal Navy families, dignitaries and hundreds of press photographers and TV cameramen all primed to record and cheer every slightest movement.

Sometimes yesterday – it occurred to me – the coverage, which if necessary would have been defended by BBC news and current affairs editors and senior managers as straightforward ‘news reporting’, possessed overtones of being little more than a naked all-day continual advertisement for the Royal Navy, the Ministry of Defence and the Government.

You could imagine the Sun and Daily Mirror journalists penning pieces either side of their afternoon naps about “Our brave boys will soon be keeping Johnny Foreigner at bay and protecting our citizens from the aggressive war-loving and devious attentions of Vladimir Putin and his communist henchmen, that North Korean idiot, and quite possibly the Chinese as well, with our latest super-warship designed to keep the peace – and do all those other things Navy ships supposedly do – for the next fifty years …”

Where was the contrary (opposing) – sorry, balancing – point of view in yesterday’s coverage?

For that matter, some might have the temerity to ask, was any such actually needed?

I’d just list the following facts that I gleaned from the internet in the last half hour or so:

The 65,000 tonne, 920 feet long, HMS Queen Elizabeth cost the nation the best part of £3 billion. Designed to be in full service by 2020, by then she will have 1,600 crew …. and hopefully some aircraft (at the moment she doesn’t have any of the latter because they’re late, massively over-budget and may not be ever able to land on the deck anyway because of some technical problem that nobody has yet been able to solve, apparently).

Two months ago, after Defence Minister Michael Fallon had boasted that HMS Queen Elizabeth would have the Russian navy look on with something like envy, the Russian Ministry of Defence retaliated by commenting that in fact she was little more that ‘a large convenient naval target …’

In November 2014 the Daily Mirror investigated the then current state of the Royal Navy as it prepared to instigate yet another round of ‘austerity’ cuts.

At that time the Navy has just 19 destroyers and frigates left in service and yet it also boasted no fewer than 33 admirals (one of them a chaplain), each on salaries of over £100,0000 per annum, together with 260 captains.

But, of course, we mustn’t just kick the Royal Navy unfairly when it’s down.

In a Parliamentary debate the year before (1913) it was revealed that the Army had some 256 brigadiers and generals and yet in total only 200 Challenger II tanks.

I just thought I’d provide some balance for Rust readers this morning as they pour milk their porridge or cornflakes …