OK, so basically, I will confess to enjoy reading the Daily Mail because it’s full of hate, and hate can be fun to read. Third world (or however you may wish to call it) debt, access to clean water and human rights abuses etc, are all very noble issues, but, at the same time, can get rather boring. Once you’ve read about one genocide, you’ll soon discover they’re all really quite similar.
I got to reading a wonderful Saturday commentary page by a certain Amanda Platell (I understand that she also writes for the Guardian giving a ‘right wing perspective’ on Wednesdays, but I have yet to waste time on it) titled ‘This baby boom will make us all go bust’, referring to the recent publication of birth and death rates . She starts off her piece stating,
Soaring immigration – and a migrant baby boom – has sent Britain’s population rocketing over the 61 million mark. We are now the second most densely populated country in the world, something that will be all too apparent on the roads and trains this bank holiday weekend’.
Ignoring the flame-stoking use of language for the moment, the second sentence claim that Britain has filled up to the point that it is now the second most densely populated country in the world, apparently in an attempt to shock the average housewife sitting in her flower-embroidered sofa into believing she will imminently be accommodating this influx in her garden, is only outdone in its disgracefulness by its shear wrongness.
Ms Platell need only type ‘population density country list’ into Google, and she will have an immediate source with which to check her words. Wikipedia is the first result, and gives a nice, simple listing.
But if you wanted, assuming you felt uneasy using such open source material, you could look up information on the Foreign Office website, the UN website, or even the easily downloadable CIA World Factbook. Had she done so, she would have found that the UK is by no means the second most densely populated country in the world.
Neither is it in the top 10.
Nor the top 20.
According to Wiki, it is a mere 52, with such illustrious countries as Singapore, Bangladesh, Taiwan, South Korea, the Netherlands, Belgium and Japan ranking higher. Compared with the second most densely populated country, Monaco, which accommodates some 17,000 people per square km, Britain stands at just under 250 people per square km, a good two orders of magnitude difference.
But to highlight one mistake by one journalist (though a journalist who at one point edited a national newspaper, and then was the press secretary to William Hague when he was leader of the Conservatives) and simply conclude the whole conservative agenda is a big pile of stink would be incorrect, and this is by no means my agenda.
What I want to consider really is the more fundamental issue in journalism of evidence.
At university, when you hand in an essay or report, the one section you must include, without which you risk scoring zero even in subjects such as Sports Science, is a reference list. If you claim that people in America eat five times the amount of food the average European does per annum to support your opinion that American’s should have a food quota, then surely there should be a little subscript in the top right leading to a reference / source of such information.
If that source is ‘my warped mind’, it should say so. If it is a study, then by who, and at what institution? At least then, you can investigate it and critique it.
Of course this is not the case across all media, and most respectable publications will cite the reports, studies and first hand observations which are featured in articles. But even then, they are not explicit (for instance, they don’t explicitly say how you can go about viewing it for yourself). A cornerstone of free speech is that it isn’t filled with wrong-speech, and also that you can verify it.
I am not involved in the profession of journalism myself (except for a brief stint with my student paper), and hence I am not exactly sure of the rules or procedures in place (defamation laws etc.), but I would like to think I have a grasp of assessing good quality information. And, simply reading any newspaper, it is hard to undertake this assessment. Since I must base my voting decisions on this information, and that opinions around me are likely to be formed by such media, it is in my interest that papers are clear in their sources and evidence, and that others are as demanding of journalistic standards.
Perhaps Ms Platell in this instance accidentally typed ‘second’ when she meant ‘fifty second’ and it missed the proof readers, or perhaps her source was some mystic whose data on population demographics spanning the world comes in the form of visions in crystal balls.
For the first case, at least I would then be able to check the source and confirm it was a ludicrous typo. For the second case, I would have reason to relegate Ms Platell to the Wacko list.
* Li-Teck Lau is a Lib Dem member, who recently graduated from university with a degree in engineering.
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26 Comments
Sadly, journalism died a few years back, to be quietly replaced with entertainment magazines on low-grade paper. The newspapers just couldn’t compete with free internet news. There’s still a vacuum waiting for something new to come along and fill it, but right now nobody has any ideas.
Well, Amanda Platell, ex-Conservative Central Office hackette, and would-be commentator on any subject you like, providing its got a spot-light on her, wont be filling any vacuum, surely.,..
I often find from people I meet that they tell me that x happened and that “proves” we should stop paying benefits to immigrants, or stop paying translaters for immigrants in hospital. In fact I have just had an ear bashing from my relatives about this. x of course is a story from which I have no knowlege and sounds very unlikely from a common sense point of view, but that of course is their point, politicians are defying common sense.
I ask them where they get the story from. It is usually from some newspaper.
The difference between me and them is that I enjoy meeting people from other countries, and although I know that immigrants will be a mixture of good and bad people like you find in all walks of life, generally speaking I am not likely to believe these stories. They on the other hand are only too willing to believe the worst.
Newspapers make profits from selling newspapers. They know what does the job; a nasty peadophile, a vicious rapist, muslims who want to kill lots of people or who fight our troops in Afghanistan, and of course immigrants who take our jobs and scrounge our benefits. Not only sex sells, but hatred and blame also. Previously this benefitted the Tories. Now it also benefits the BNP. The newspaper owners don’t care, they just want to make profits.
However this leaves us with a problem, because this is the opposite to what we want as Liberals.
It has been like this for a long time of course. Maybe it is not getting any worse, but it is not easy answering these people.
I’m always amazed at people like Amanda Platell who would probably like to see large numbers of public sector workers dismissed because their jobs are “pointless” and they get paid to write utter crap!
http://www.ifyoulikeitsomuchwhydontyougolivethere.com – the war on stupid starts here.
Beautifully written Li-Teck. I like your turn of phrase. Hope someone’s offered you a useful job 🙂
Whilst I agree it’s a big problem I’m not really sure there is any solution?
People desire to consume vast amounts of unadulterated rubbish media. Digg is about the best example of this given it’s a news site who’s agenda is entirely driven by the viewers.
And what do we get (looking at most digged pane?)
In first place! A bad downfall parody video.
In second place! An amusing Gary Busey animated gif.
Third we have a picture of a man next to an amusingly named town.
Fourth ‘Fat chick rides mechanical bull’ video.
At 5th place we finally get a ‘real’ story, where we discover that 57% of voters would replace the entire congress. 6th place? Now we’re talking a Huffington post comedy sketch! It even contains actual politics jokes, so this is progress.
7th, 9th and 10th are lol cats, how stuff works and “disney to acquire marvel”.
That leaves us with one actual story in the top 10 pane rated 8th, Mc Cain slating torture, presumably popular because it’s a Republican slating a Republican on a relatively democrat biased site.
So people want the emotive stories, I don’t think anyone would dispute it, but short of some kind of hideous non-liberal legislation of media (and with the internet, good luck with making that work!) I don’t really see any solution.
‘I’m always amazed at people like Amanda Platell who would probably like to see large numbers of public sector workers dismissed because their jobs are “pointless” and they get paid to write utter crap! ‘
The public get a choice whether they want to pay for Amanda Patell’s prose but no choice on how many non jobs are created in the public sector which they are obliged to pay with their taxes.
Am amazed how supportive the Lib Dems are of mass immigration whilst pretending at the same time to care about the enviroment.
@ Neale Upstone
Thanks 🙂 and thankfully I have managed to avoid becoming a dreaded NEET!
@ James S
I too think that attempting to regulate the media through legislation is doomed to failure, even if it were to simply require that any claim made in public be supported with evidence (such as in journal articles) – you would probably need a monster of a regulatory body.
I suppose the only solution I could imagine is to simply put more emphasis in education to question what you hear or read. Then, you would at least hope, such commentary would be:
1. harmless, since people would tend to question it more, and,
2. self reinforcing in terms of reducing the frequency of absurdities since fewer people would be willing to read bad (by way of correct) commentary.
But this only drags up the liberal paradox of whether the state should indeed control how people think, even if that ‘how’ is rational inquiry.
“Wrong-speech” is a bit Newspeak, don’t you think?
Irony of ironies. Amanda Platell is Australian but, presumably, no longer considers herself an immigrant and thereby feels free to write tendentious drivel about immigration in a national newspaper.
Breaking up the media monopolies would be a good place to start. That would go a long way in securing better news and a freer press.
Another possible way the situation could improve is if people stop reading factually incorrect news in favor of looking at funny video’s of kittens.
Then all the bad news outlets will go bust as their readership end up just viewing kittens and serious news outlets can be the only source of info.
Problem is we don’t really have any serious news sources which _only_ publish real news.
Hmmm
“A cornerstone of free speech is that it isn’t filled with wrong-speech, and also that you can verify it.”
Isn’t the cornerstone of free speech that if you catch someone making an incorrect claim, as you have done, that claim can be challenged, as you have done? Amanda Platell is free to make whatever foolish claims she likes, and other writers are free to challenge her assertions. And of course, we are all free to ignore columnists who choose to make wild-eyed claims without citing their sources: that would be the entire profession, then.
If you look at the population density of England (1023/mi2), rather than that of the United Kingdom (640/mi2), then it’s higher than the Netherlands and is 27th on the wiki list; if you start discounting microstates and non-states (e.g. Singapore, Malta, Monaco, Palestine, Taiwan, Hong Kong) then there’s only Bangladesh and South Korea with a higher population density.
Amanda Platell is still wrong, England (as distinct from Britain, which is what she said) is very densely populated by any standard; Britain isn’t particularly extraordinary, largely because Scotland and Wales have large areas with very few people in (the Highlands and Islands, Grampians, Snowdonia, etc).
Of course, if you start discounting “non-states” then you can’t validly make a comparison with England, which isn’t a state either.
It’s true that Scotland and Wales are very underpopulated in comparison with England – which suggests that what Britain has a problem with is not the level of population or immigration but the internal distribution of its population. If the issue is genuinely the pressure of excess population on services or the environment (i.e. if that’s not just a smokescreen for cultural/racial dislike of dark-skinned immigrants) then a Scot moving to England (as I did 20 years ago) is just as big a problem as a Pole or a Pakistani doing likewise.
@ Phillip Walker
‘Catching’ people out as stating something incorrect is indeed what freedom of speech is all about, as you say. But as I said in my closing statements, you simply are not given the opportunity to inquire. Platell might, for all we know, have stumbled upon a multiculturalist conspiracy in which the whole world except for a few are decieved about population data for some arbitrary agenda.
As consumers of information, I guess I am just mismayed at what appears a majority consider rigorous journalism, especially in a political culture which in grounded in diffuse decision making.
Incidentally, I’m a big fan of the lolcat; stick some cute cat pics on the web and ascribe to it some witticism in some randomly prescribed accent. But let’s distinguish entertainment from news. I might read Dogma Weekly Magazine for fun, but many do for guidance.
@ Richard Gadsden
Ignoring Wales, Scotland and NI in concluding density is a redundant argument – the UK is the country (let’s go by UN recognition) in question. If we are to make our own arbitrary definitions, why not choose London, or perhaps define ‘country’ as the area in which I am standing – 1 person / 0.25m^2 [based on me occupying 50x50cm space] = 4,000,000 / km^2 – a pretty large figure. In caluclating China, why not discard XinJiang and Tibet; for America, why not use NY State as the representative measure etc.
Regardless, how ‘out’ Platell is in this case does not address the underlying point.
Reactionary Middle-England appears to know little geography. Even ranking average population densities underestimates the idiocy of claiming that “Britain is full”, because they don’t take into account *habitable* land. Japan and Korea and Nepal are exceedingly mountainous, so would rank much higher for practical density – where people actually do live. Many countries have huge areas blocked from sustaining any significant proportion of their population by desert or undeveloped wilderness, including China and Brazil. Egypt and Iraq have for many centuries had some of the densest populations of the every age, confined to river valleys and deltas.
There are some real issues here – the benefits of high immigration fall more at the richer end of our society, the costs fall more at the poorer end. Of course the international jet set would prefer to be able to employ nice hard-working and well-educated people from other countries than to bother with the lower end of the people here. It’s cheaper than having to pay for better education here, isn’t it? Bring them in, exploit them, leave the next generation in a mess, then bring more in – there’s plenty more where they came from. We liberals are so anxious not to be seen as racists that we prefer to be classists, we cannot see why people at the lower end of society might be concerned by high immigration from which they benefit little, so we just dismiss them as motivated by racism and really what we mean is they are nasty working class scum so who cares about them anyway.
“We liberals are so anxious not to be seen as racists that we prefer to be classists, we cannot see why people at the lower end of society might be concerned by high immigration from which they benefit little, so we just dismiss them as motivated by racism and really what we mean is they are nasty working class scum so who cares about them anyway.”
Maybe that’s what you mean, Matthew, but it’s not what I mean. I believe in taxation, income redistribution, state-funded high-quality education, and I don’t believe that the benefits of these things should be restricted to white people or people who (no doubt through great skill and judgement) managed to get born here. You can’t judge the rightness (practical or ethical) of a position by enquiring whether “the international jet set” (by the way, who?) are for or against it and adopting the opposite stance.
I believe in taxation, income redistribution, state-funded high-quality education, and I don’t believe that the benefits of these things should be restricted to white people or people who (no doubt through great skill and judgement) managed to get born here.
Yes, and are you suggesting I do not? If so, you have failed to understand the point I was making, but your failure to understand it proves that point very well.
No, Matthew, I’m suggesting that you believe that “people at the lower end of society … are nasty working class scum so who cares about them anyway.” I’m suggesting that because it’s what you said – unless “we” (as in “We liberals”, “we just dismiss them”) means something different to you.
And yes, I understand irony, and I understand that what you were trying to imply was that everyone else who claims to be in favour of immigration (I’ve no idea whether you’re saying that you’re in favour of it or not) is in fact motivated at best by a failure to understand working-class life and at best by a snobbish contempt for the lower orders – and you specifically suggested that ‘we’ don’t want to pay for decent education over here. The point of my post was that I don’t accept that characterisation and find it irritating and offensive and smug.
All of which could perhapsbe said of my post as well. Hm. Nevertheless. At least in the face of being misunderstood I’m attempting to explain what I meant, rather than making gnomic remarks to the effect of “your inability to understand me proves that I’m right”. Care to reciprocate?
Malcolm, the “we” came after the point about education, so no I did not “specifically suggest that ‘we’ don’t want to pay for decent education over here”. By “international jet set” I mean those who are paid huge amounts of money and we are told we have to do that, and tax them lightly because otherwise they will jet off and work elsewhere, and they are “wealth creators” do we can’t have that. It seems to me there is a process where our country is being run increasingly for the benefit of such people, with any benefit to anyone else just a side-effect. But that’s another story.
The specific point about “we liberals” now, well it’s a hard point so I’m lightening it by using “we” and I can see myself in this caricature I’m giving so it’s not wrong. However, I think I was reasonably clear – I feel the benefits of immigration fall more at the top end of society and the problems it causes more at the bottom end. That is not to say there aren’t benefits or disbenefits for everyone. But to say it is all entirely beneficial to everyone I feel is wrong, it is dishonest not to admit there are costs as well. We seem to find it very hard to admit that because we are scared of being accused of being “racist”. Also, as those who bear the social costs more tend to be those at the bottom end, just one small example might be the white English kids in schools who don’t get much attention because all those kids who arrive hardly speaking any English require more immediate work and resources, we seem to find it particularly easy to condemn them when they are trying to put their point of view as just “racists”. I do feel there is a big element of class prejudice in this – because they are poor and not well educated and not very articulate or skilled in the words the educated use, what they say may come across as “racist” and may very easily be mocked.
Discussion on immigration is bedevilled by this, and the mocking tones adopted by liberals pouring scorn on anyone who doesn’t accept the “immigration is 100% good for everyone, if you disagree you’re a racist” line I think actually do often show a lack of consideration for the poorest in our society. Yes, I think that can come down to they aren’t “people like us”, so we have no empathy with them and dismiss them using silly stereotypes. Just like racism really, but it’s class not race that’s the dividing issue.
Now, I feel your comment did very well illustrate my point. I cannot see anything in my original comment which is racist, which suggests white people are superior or deserve better services or anything like that. But you reply quoting me and saying “I don’t believe that the benefits of these things should be restricted to white people” which only makes any sense if you believe I was implying there shoudl be restrictions of benefit based on skin colour.
Well, there you go – I simply raised the issue that I believe there are problems as well as benefits associated with immigration, you immediately replied by effectively accusing me of being a white supremacist and paying no attention whatsoever to the real point I made. Your mind was closed, and seeing how I was accused of being a racist no-one else would like to join in this debate except to say “nah-nah-nah-nah-nah, racist scum”, because of course it is political death in liberal circles to put oneself in a position where others think you are a racist.
So, if there are any real problems associated with immigration, it is impossible to discuss them, consequently they are only discussed by those who do have racist intentions, which just serves to push non-racists into the racist camp because they feel “these are the only people who understand what I feel”.
Oh, for heaven’s sake. This all gets a bit Alice in Wonderland.
To suggest that race is irrelevant to immigration is just weird. Restricting immigration is precisely about restricting the benefits of living in this country to those who are already here, and keeping out those who want to come, and (given that most of the former are white and most of the latter aren’t) there’s clearly a strong racial impact even if you doubt that there’s a strong racist motivation. But okay: scratch the remark about ‘white people’ and just stick to ‘people who managed to be born here’. The fact that we’re mostly white can be put down as coincidence.
But if it’s somehow outrageous for me to mention a point which is clearly a common element in the argument (i.e. many of those who oppose immigration are racist, openly or not) but which wasn’t part of your argument, then let me point out in turn that I never said that “it is all entirely beneficial to everyone” or “immigration is 100% good for everyone, if you disagree you’re a racist” or anything of the sort. Perhaps other people do say that (nobody I’ve met), but I didn’t and I don’t.
As for the ad hominem stuff: to say that I accused you of being a “white supremacist” is ridiculous. Really – I mentioned white people not having exclusive rights to the goods of our society, and that means I’m accusing you of being KKK? You, however, feel perfectly at liberty to accuse me of being “classist”. (You use “we” again, of course. But that doesn’t make the accusation less plain or more reasonable.)
Look back at your own posts. You said “we just dismiss them as motivated by racism and really what we mean is they are nasty working class scum so who cares about them anyway”. I said “Maybe that’s what you mean, Matthew, but it’s not what I mean. ” And then went on to explain what I (would) mean by attacking racist motivations in the immigration debate. That’s not accusing you of racism. It’s explaining (perhaps not very well, but we’ve already established that you’re on the side of people who can’t argue their case very well, so that’s okay) why at least some liberals talk about racism and don’t mean what you said they (we) do.
Yet somehow, you feel that I’m the one who’s being unreasonable and intemperately attacking you. With my “closed mind”, of course. Please: stick to the arguments.
Your basic argument, by the way, that there are reasons other than pure racism why working-class people object to immigration, and that we need to engage with that, is not wrong. Just because I objected to your offensive characterisation of anti-racist, pro-immigration liberals doesn’t mean I was rejecting everything else in your post. However, I worry that the argument about recognising people’s worries over immigration a la Blears or Blunkett becomes a sort of code for validating anti-immigrant policies and signalling to supporters of the racist right “it’s safe to vote for us”. (NO, I’m not saying that’s what you’re really thinking or necessarily what even Blears thinks. I don’t pretend to read minds. I worry that for at least some people that is the intention and the effect of such an approach. That doesn’t mean I want to ban it or shout it down, but I assert my right to raise my concern.) Of course, one way of confronting those concerns is to point out the benefits of immigration even for those who already live here; another is to stress the common interests of the working class, whether born here or immigrant or still overseas, and the ways in which governments and the owners of capital (including media outlets, which was the target of the original article, if you recall) exploit divisions to undermine those common interests. (There: now I’m risking being accused of Marxism in liberal circles. Scary.)
A final point on the substance of your argument. When you say that the benefits of immigration are mostly felt at the top of society and the costs at the bottom, tell me: do you think that immigrants themselves don’t benefit from immigration, or that they are at the top end of society? Or just that – whatever their colour – their experience doesn’t count?
Actually, Matthew, in the interests of sanity and the cold light of morning:
* I accept that you are not a racist and the point you made was not racist. I did not mean to imply that you were (I was only defending the notion that some anti-immigration feeling is racist), but I accept that my original reply to your post could be understood that way, and I should have been more careful with my choice of words. I apologise for the offence caused.
* I also believe (as I mentioned in my last post) that there is merit in your argument that we need to engage more constructively with those who genuinely fear immigration and its effect on their lives.
* I do maintain that your own initial post was very aggressive and condescending in tone, and clearly implied that most of the pro-immigration comment above (not just mine) was motivated by class-based contempt rather than genuinely liberal or compassionate motives. Of course, I should have just pointed this out, rather than responding with more sarcasm. I’d rather have a sensible debate about the issue than engage in further name-calling.
I believe the duty of the government of this country is to protect and serve the people of this country. Is that “racist”, given that most people in this country are white?
If it is racist and so unacceptable, then why is our government spending money on providing services to people in this country when there are poorer people in the rest of the world who have far worse services than we have here? So, shouldn’t we scrap plans to build schools and hospitals here and instead build them in some poor country where what they have is far worse than what we already have?
Wow we’ve drifted off point haven’t we.
Taking it back to the media. Two major flaws, firstly the lack of accountability within the national press. If calling X a rapist on page 1 gets you £5 million profit in added sales while the cost of a potential court action and the tiny apology on page 16 is no more than say £2 million then its clear the paper has no disincentive not to publish. (Having a toothless press complaints commission doesn’t help either)
Secondly the death of local newspapers/news. At best national news can give only snapshots of all the details needed for readers/viewers to make informed choices based on what they have seen/read. The massive drop in standards of local journalism has meant that there is no longer a buffer between national headlines and the reality in our communities.