CoVID-19 – week 10
The need for sub-defining the term ‘news’ is long overdue. The definition comes from it being a report on what is new and we understand it to refer to items appearing in news-papers, on TV or via Web channels. When someone says, “have you heard the news” they are generally refering to such an article or item. News channels have traditionally separated reporting from commentary on the news and op-eds and general articles that are more instructional. There has never been a pretence that news outlets have no bias though there has been a growing trend, particularly in the tabloids, for them to mix news and commentary with no clear divide between the two.
the sad truth is that people generally only wake up to the full story at least 10 years after the fact, if at all
We are left to do the separation internally but we do have a choice over which outlet we read or listen to. For some this is a trivial mental exercise while others simply swallow it wholesale. Nevertheless the common understanding of what constitutes news is universally understood. We don’t generally consider stories decanted a week, month or year after the event to be news though they might form part of the news story. Yet when a story breaks of something that happened some time ago we still consider that to be news. To be fair, the report is new, its just that the incident in question didn’t just happen but reaction to the revelation can be as if the report and the incident were contemporaneous.
By its very nature news is generally something that happened recently but we get fooled into thinking such an incident appears from nowhere, as if it were not inevitable or doesn’t have a history going back years or decades. If you’ve ever skidded on ice you know the feeling when the car comes to rest wrapped around a lamp post or in a hedge (or even harmlessly left pointing in the wrong direction) that the significant point is where you hit the brakes rather than when you came to a standstill.
Certain incidents highlight the back story such as the Grenfell fire. The tragedy of lives lost and families dispossessed was overshadowed by the scandal of the non-fire-retardant cladding as this was the chief cause of the fire quickly raging out of control. The alarm had been raised months before and the fire was horribly predictable. It was, as they say, an accident waiting to happen; an avoidable tragedy; a consequence of greed and incompetence but more improtantly, of institutional racism. The victims were of less value than the predominently white, wealthy home owners for whom the tower was an eyesore.
Commentators are rightly separating the story of Dominic Cummings’ trip to Durham from the Prime Minister’s defence of it. They are also correctly rating the PM’s defence as more heinous as it represents a direct insult, by the government, to those who have suffered in their obedience to the rules and from the government . That press conference and the blanket approval of Cummings’ actions by the Cabinet was difficult to have predicted. The inexplicablity of it makes this particularly newsworthy and the papers are jumping on it from a great height.
What shouldn’t surprise us is that something like this was almost inevitable given the timeline from when the Conservatives came to power in 2010 and even beyond that. This is the culmination of four decades of the neoliberal destruction of our democracy, of government institutions and state infrastructure. And the sad truth is that people generally only wake up to the full story at least 10 years after the fact, if at all.
Both Dominic Cummings and Boris Johnson, along with the circus he’s surrounded himself with are the fruit of a decade of crony capitalism, asset stripping of the state, accommodation of billionaires, corruption of politics and an establishment leaning media. Westminster has been hollowed out by careerist politicians of all shades while those who have stood up for decency, justice and compassion have been systematically smeered and demonised.
Six months ago it was abundantly clear that Boris Johnson was as trustworthy as a fox in a hen coup while Dominic Cummings was a sinister player in the shadows. Why didn’t Boris hiding in a fridge or stealing a reporter’s phone disqualify him from becoming Prime Minister? Even Theresa May suffered the consequences of her poor judgement. Why were the Tory claims about hospitals and spending not ridiculed in the press like the Cabinet are now being hung out to dry? It should be obvious that the Daily Mail only feels free to abandon the Johnson regime because it won’t derail their right wing agenda.
The opposition has successfully been dismantled while the power base of the corporations, the elite and the machines of war is consolidating the gains of the wars in the Middle East and the 2008 crash. It suits the papers to join in the condemnation because they can sense the wind of change. They understand the mood of the country and so cynically they will side with public opinion to their own nefarious ends. And if we join in the #booforboris chant, like a crowd tasting blood, we will have completely missed the point. Dominic Cummings has only got away with his appalling behaviour because of Boris Johnson, and Boris didn’t elect himself.
Maybe we don’t need a new definition for news that we should have known already. We talk of old-news in the sense that its last week’s paper and can be discarded. Maybe that can be reclaimed, not really meaning anything different; rather that the moment we hit the brakes is more meaningful than when we fly through the windscreen.