The government is to send
a 14 page leaflet to every household setting out the ‘facts’ that
make a vote to stay in the EU the sensible thing to do. Anything
wrong or undemocratic about that? US readers might be rather
surprised to learn the official In and Out groups are only allowed to
spend up to £7m each on campaigning: we in the UK have this rather
quaint and intensely democratic idea that money should not be able to
buy elections. But the government’s leaflet, which will cost nearly
£10 million to produce and distribute, does not count as part of
that. [1]
For that reason alone, this leaflet is both unfair and undemocratic.
But most of the complaints about this seem to have come from those
supporting the Leave campaign. Is this because others who might
normally be expected to speak up for fairness and democracy are
staying quiet because they support staying in the EU? I honestly do
not know, for reasons that will become clear.
What I think is pretty clear is that a large majority of what you
might call the establishment, and also a majority of what was once
called ‘the chattering classes’, plus a majority of academics
(e.g.),
are in favour of staying in the EU. One of those is Timothy Garton
Ash, who wrote an article
in the Guardian recently about BBC coverage. He complains that
because the BBC is focused on being fair to both sides, it is failing
to be informative. I couldn’t help thinking to myself as I read
this (very fair and sensible) article, welcome to the world that many
scientists (including social scientists) have had to live with for
quite some time. Here is the BBC’s mission, which I was discussing
recently in a talk on a different topic.
The world that Garton Ash describes is a world where, on any subject
that is contested by significant (to the BBC) groups, evidence is
only presented with counter evidence for balance, even when the
quality of the counter evidence is weak or non-existent. It is a
world
where the view of the massive majority of scientific researchers has
to be ‘balanced’ by the pseudo science of special interests. It
is a world
where everyone is an expert on economics. It is a world where the
visual media refrain from presenting facts if those facts might be
seen as ‘political’. It is the ‘shape of the earth:views
differ’ world, and the world where everyone just knows that in 2010
the UK government was saved from the brink of bankruptcy. [2]
As we are seeing in this EU referendum, setting up everything as a
two sided debate does little to inform anyone. It can even be
counterproductive, setting the climate change scientist (full of
natural scientific caution) against the climate change denier (chosen
for their rhetorical ability). It is a format that militates against
evidence: you cannot normally show a chart in a debate, and so
instead we get the presentation of summary statistics that are
selected on the basis of how best they support a view rather than how
best they summarise the data. (UK spending on flood prevention is a clear example of how that happens.) It is a format where even numbers lose
their meaning, and where dots
are hardly ever connected. [3]
It is not hard to see how that happens, particularly when media
organisations are fighting for their survival. Some things can be
done, as long as they are seen to be non-political. For example
journalists can use statistics
in a way that informs rather than confuses. For example less status
should be given to journalists who have good political contacts, and
greater status given to those who know their subject and can quickly
source experts. Above all else, we have to do all we can to resist
government attacks on the public media.
But these changes will not make a major difference. I suspect that
the BBC, for example, will only start to fulfil its mission to inform
and educate when it is safe for it to do so. In the meantime we will
have to put up with the uniform ‘views on the shape of the earth
differ’ style of reporting. The government’s leaflet on the EU
may be one consequence. Our membership of the EU may become another.
[1] That the government has resorted to trying to rig the vote in
such a blatant way is interesting on many levels. (If you think this
language is too strong, how would you react to the government doing
the same before a general election?) I suspect the government was
unprepared for the impact of being on the wrong side of most of the
print media. In many other respects, it reflects chickens coming to
roost. (One I did not mention here
is voting ‘reform’ which tends to exclude the young who tend not
to vote Conservative, but who also tend
to favour the EU.) But the move may also reflect continuing hubris.
Is it wise to associate the Remain side so clearly with a government
which is right now losing popularity? It would have been so much
better to do a 2003 Euro entry type exercise.
The government must have known it would come out in its favour, so
why was this not done?
[2] Just in case anyone does not get the reference, more detail here.
I’m not sure whether this example represents ignorance, or
journalists talking
to the wrong people (i.e. some City economists), or not presenting
the facts because this would be seen as ‘being political’.
Probably a mixture of all three.
[3] For example, compare how much information you get from this
2 minutes (from the excellent John Van Reenen) to ten times that
amount of normal reporting.
