Is it the politicians or the media?

[ipsogenix]

I've been thinking a lot about why the political situations that we see in the press and on the television news cause us so much worry.

I do wonder whether the way that the media portray news situations make the situations sound more worrying, or at least distort the message more than is really helpful.

For example, I think the ticker tape news reels and the constant 24 hour news channels, with nasty pictures and sometime handheld camera footage can give an air of implied threat that is not actually helpful to the message.

It seems to me that the people in the EU debate are having a hard time getting their message across in a sensible way because they are having to work in a world of soundbites and 30 second clips, and that someone with a more thoughtful approach like Jeremy Corbyn would struggle to get a calm 30 minute interview in which to give a quietly reasoned opinion.

Tbh, I really respected him for saying that he thought the EU was about 7 out 10 good. I'd like to see more of that honesty in the press, and I wish that the media would facilitate that, and not try to scare us all the time. I gather that Jeremy Corbyn has been giving lots of speeches, but the media are not bothering to cover them because they are more interested in the Tory infighting.

I wondered, does anyone else see that, and if so, can we encourage the politicians and media to realise that we have intelligent heads out here and that we do want to hear thoughtful, reasoned debate, instead of soundbites?

I would rather that but facts and figures and soundbites are the way politics is reported we live in a world where we are overloaded with constant information that often has little depth would we keep tuned in

I am not sure JC could last 30 minutes of lying through his teeth mmm second thoughts maybe he could

I think both the media and politicians are to blame tbh.

I think the performance of politicians on both sides of the referendum argument has been pretty woeful frankly. No one has led with positivity and courage. It's generally been fear led and reactive.

I am on the Bremain side and I think our case is a harder, more complex argument to put forward. Imperfect cooperation, difficult compromise, the politics of consensus is not as "easy" to promote as the exploitation of long held fears.

A concrete example of this follows here where the Daily Fail have been forced to publish a correction.

This makes pretty interesting reading too!

I agree that it's good to hear the thoughtful, moderate and intelligent discussions about the EU. There have been interesting debates and interviews on TV/radio over the past few months, as well as many good articles in the press and online.

There has also been simplification of some of the issues in the media, to say the least. Some think drama and conflict make "good TV", so things might be exaggerated to this end. And I suppose it's easier to write stark, stand-out headlines if everything is artificially reduced to just one main topic for each side, when actually there are so many more things to consider which are just as, or more, important.

Reducing the arguments in this way causes them to stagnate, as the same mottos will keep re-surfacing instead of moving forward in a dialogue.