Charlie Brooker’s Newswipe
BBC 4
The Great Offices of State
BBC 4
Charlie Brooker’s Newswipe should be made compulsive viewing for every media student or wannabe journalist, especially the television variety. It’s a weekly, highly personal, caustic trawl through the media, which damns anything that doesn’t smack of sound journalism.
Recently, it was all those cringing television exterior news shots. “And now over to our reporter in snow-bound Bognor.” Cue shivering and wet reporter standing in a dark road somewhere – it could be anywhere – with snow billowing down and kids in the background hurling snowballs at him. You know what I mean – you’ve seen it on every news bulletin. But why? Most of the time it’s not necessary and is just a waste of money. It’s all about new technology and the feeling that, if you have it, you’ve got to use it.
Or alternatively: “The press conference will be starting any moment now.” Cue static shot of near empty room with one or two people milling around chatting and nothing happening. Cue studio: “Well, it’s clearly not started yet.”
And there are the walking shots where some inane-looking reporter wanders down a busy high street, across a bridge or through some crowd muttering to a camera 300 yards away before coming to a standstill to deliver their final telling piece to camera.
Then there was John Terry. And who, asked Charlie Brooker, hyped the story up to the extent that it became the number one item on even the BBC news? The media, of course. “There’s growing concern that Terry may have to resign as England captain… fears grow that Terry…” Yes, you’ve got it. The growing concern came not from the public, who didn’t give a jot, but from the media.
Terry’s car was even buzzed by helicopter on the way to Wembley for his crucial meeting with the England team manager. But no one was sure that it really was Terry’s car. Well, yes, it is difficult to tell from half a mile up. It turned out it wasn’t. One of these days, all these helicopters buzzing cars, hearses, ambulances or whatever, will collide and there will be real carnage on our streets.
There’s an underlying thesis here about the state of the British media and, in particular, our coverage of news that should not be sniffed at just because it’s cynical or amusing. Brooker is doing us a favour by pointing out these anomalies. Whether TV bosses will ever take on board his thesis is another matter.
The Great Offices of State falls into none of these traps. That skilled programme maker Michael Cockerell has taken an inside look at the three great offices of government; the Home Office, Foreign Office and the Treasury, talking to permanent secretaries and former secretaries of state, as well as tracking some of the daily activities of the office.
And it provides a fascinating insight. The Home Office is known as the graveyard; few ministers ever enhance their career within its walls, instead usually leaving feet first. Roy Jenkins described it as the “dark department”. It seems immovable and little more than a containment exercise. Tony Blair was horrified at the attitude that nothing could be done. Everything had to be managed rather than reversed – crime statistics, immigration violations, or whatever. Inevitably, as a number of ex-ministers can testify, it led to clashes between civil servants and politicians.
The Foreign Office on the other hand, with its austere decoration, paintings and calm, has always been a palace of dreams or a gentleman’s club. Margaret Beckett was made to feel little more than an inadequate interloper. Margaret Thatcher was never interested in the Foreign Office. The mores of the Foreign Office has always been diplomacy and compromise. She wanted neither, particularly when it came to the Falklands and Europe. Robin Cook said that he was never sure whether he had arrived in a Rolls Royce of an office with a wonderful staff or had been kidnapped and taken into custody.
It took that wonderful Whitehall analyst Peter Hennessy to sum it all up. He reported that he had been told by an MI6 man with Cold War experience that the two great pillars of the 20th century had both gone – the Soviet bloc and the Foreign Office. The Foreign Office, it seems, has finally been reined in – a mere shadow of its former self.
