Holding business and government to account?

Holding their spokespeople to account, more like it

The mainstream press repeatedly tell us that they pride themselves in holding authority, business and government to account. So, what is account?

There are times when court cases or parliamentary inquiries do cite the investigative work of journalists. And that is truly holding people to account, but it’s not actually the press that is doing the account-holding. It is those with power and leverage who are convinced by the veracity of the reporting, who then take it and use it to back up the pointed questions that they themselves ask. They may even sometimes get answers. But, they will in fact only do that once the reporting is at a very convincing level, and it is sad to have to state that achieving that level of proof can prove itself to be very dangerous, as the fates of Bruno Pereira and Dom Phillips in the Amazon jungle graphically showed, not to mention the hundreds of journalists murdered in the Middle East.

But the questions that the press ask mostly go unanswered: We contacted the company in question for comment. Yes, and they ignored you. That may also speak volumes, but of course one cannot speculate on why no reply was given or what that portends. And that has to stop.

Under the freedom of information legislation, the public and members of the press corps can ask government for information. Sometimes, they don’t even get that. Let alone feedback on the news stories they propose to write. And even when there is an organised press secretary within a company or government department, the answers come not from those who take the decisions under scrutiny, but from paid spin masters. If the press is to break through the walls of spin and silence that plague our misinformation society, then something needs to be done before people are truly held to account.

When did you last hear of a corporation that went through grief emotions? Oh, pleeze, spare me corporate grief. Spare me corporate concern. Spare me corporate spokespersons.

Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn

There is a very old film that some of you may know of, entitled Roman Holiday (1953). It stars Gregory Peck as a down-on-his-luck reporter in Rome, who’s under threat of getting the chop unless he can find a good story. On his way home, he encounters a woman (Audrey Hepburn), half drunk, lying on a park bench, whom, out of nothing but platonic chivalry, he takes home so that she will have a soft bed for the night—his, as it turns out (he sleeps on the couch). On the way, she treats him as if she were a princess and, in the morning, he takes a closer look at the sleeping beauty and realises that she is a princess. He and his photographer buddy spend the day with her, having all the fun princesses cannot usually have: she has in fact broken out of her embassy, fed up to the point of desperation with formal royal protocol. This is the first time in her life she has ever been free.

Now, the reason I’m filling you in on the plot in this level of detail is because, in the end, she is forced to break off what is fast becoming a love story between a European royal and an American reporter, and return to the embassy to fulfil her official engagements, which include a press conference, and who should be at that but Gregory Peck and his photographer friend (together with his nifty little camera). A question is asked of her: of all the cities she has visited during her state tour of Europe, which has she enjoyed the most? The prim, disciplined, slightly coy princess starts to spiel out the official version. All of the cities she had visited had their charms and she enjoyed every one of them—and then she breaks off, a glint in her eye and a catch in her voice: “Rome, by all means, Rome! I will cherish my visit here in memory as long as I live.” Her unbridled happiness at having seen Rome the way the Romans see it was irrepressible. It had to out: Rome! And, with that, the film ends, and there are lumps in the audience’s throats.

Now, that’s all very nice, but the question is this: what response do you think the ladies and gentlemen of the press would have got out of a spokesperson? Of course, the answer Rome was predicated on the cavorting that Crown Princess Ann had done with Joe Bradley the previous day. But the honesty of the reply was provoked by the two of them, she and he, standing there, face to face. That’s fiction, but the next one’s fact.

David Frost and Richard Nixon

British TV presenter David Frost interviewed ex-US President Richard Nixon over a period of four weeks in 1977. With many days of carefully planned and almost catastrophic interviewing behind them, Frost was nearing the end of the contracted access to the ex-president. His goal was to get some kind of admission out of Nixon concerning the Watergate goings-on, over the years 1972-1974, a scandal that had rocked Washington, D.C. and, quite frankly, the entire world. Finally, on that last day, Frost secured what he’d come all the way from London for. In the shot back to David Frost during the following clip, you can observe him as an alchemist, seeing lead turn to gold before his very eyes.

What are the chances of ever having secured Richard Nixon’s apology to his country through the mouth of a spokesperson?

The horse’s mouth

I don’t want to hear spokespersons mouthing platitudes any more, not on behalf of companies (by Nick Clegg, politician turned coat), not on behalf of individuals (like Michael Cole doing it for Mohammed al Fayed, even if not in the ladies’ toilet), not on behalf of governments (leave it out, please). Telling us that worker safety is their prime concern, or that customer satisfaction is their first priority, or about the thundering mandate that the electorate has bestowed, to ride a coach and horses through the law. We have now seen in all the gory detail what the highest priorities are of corporations and governments. So, kindly strip away this corporate, governmental veil and let us see the blushing bride in all her coyness.

Mine ears will hear the glory of the coming of the chairs of boards. Them I shall give ear to. Them I shall listen to, and them I shall look in the eye as they explain their deep regret at the accidents they cause, at the devastation their industries wreak, and as they express their sorrow for the deaths that result from their faulty machinery or the pollution they dump in rivers and in the sea.

Margaret Thatcher and Gerry Adams

Back in the 1980s and early 90s, Margaret Thatcher tried to deny Sinn Fein’s Gerry Adams a voice. If the voice of Gerry Adams purportedly gave oxygen to Sinn Fein’s lies, then the voices of spokespersons, by the reverse mechanism, provide cushioning to capitalism’s lies. Well, let capitalism speak for itself. I don’t want an actor, I want the people who are responsible. The horse’s mouth. To be sure, they’re there crowing like parakeets when there’s something to say that casts them in the light of glory. But not a shadow is to be seen of them when the story’s less flattering.

Thatcher was afraid that, by hearing Adams’ actual voice, I’d be allowed to draw some other conclusion about what the man had to say; and that objective is also achieved with spokespersons. Margaret Thatcher believed I’d be sucked in by Mr Adams’ silver-tongued oratory, so the TV press was obliged to interpose actors’ voices to stand in for Sinn Fein. Getting spokespersons to speak the words of corporations is just the reverse of that, although it serves the same purpose: so that I should not be able to reach my own judgment of the real people behind the real acts, policies and decisions. They interpose spokespersons to stand in for governments and companies, lest I should not be sucked in by their oratory. Well, the press should refuse to publish their acted statements, and make it clear that they will only publish what the executives themselves say, bare-faced, to the reporter.

Elon Musk’s Twitter/X

Some press organs have already taken a stand at what Twitter turned into when Elon Musk bought it. They no longer post on what is now X. At one time, that would have been viewed in editorial offices as unconscionable. I think they should now take an editorial stance on how to treat the press releases and statements of professional spin doctors. We’ve been duped for long enough. A person who’s capable of chairing a board meeting is capable of talking to a reporter without having their minder there to hold their tongue.

Tesla’s haywire car, Japan and the US government spokeswoman

For example, if Tesla, the car maker, was so “deeply saddened” at the death of Stefan Meier in 2018, a member of the public who was killed by being toasted alive when his Tesla car literally went haywire, for which the maker has never in all the years since offered an explanation, then let its CEO, and its entire executive board, line up and say, one after the other, how deeply saddened they are. It can’t be difficult. They said they are deeply saddened, so let’s hear them say it: I am deeply saddened. They’re not complex words, are they? Because what’s important here is not what words are said, but how they’re said, and how seven years of looking into the causes of the accident have revealed no progress in answering why Herr Meier is dead.

In Japan and China, corporate scandals conclude with much penitent bowing and scraping apologies, by the chief executives themselves, and not by some mouthpiece. It may be all show, but at least it’s not a show by actors. (Rephrasing that is more difficult than you can imagine, so let’s assume you know what I mean.) Let us therefore hear it from their own mouths and see it in their own eyes, how saddened the Tesla folk are. That we shall listen to. And judge. And, if justified, condemn. But not platitudes from faceless, deep-cleavage, wearing-a-cross puppets. Not even if they possess the charms of Ms Karoline Leavitt.

The press must deny spokespersons a voice. I shall write to the press and tell them, have no fear. Oh, if Mr Trump wants to cherry-pick the journalists who can be present at his press secretary’s announcements, then the press can pick and choose whether they’re there to have their jaws dropped by her pronouncements. But they won’t stop misinformation by publishing the information that’s spoon-fed to them by spin doctors, and then telling their readers: decide for yourself.

After all, if you speak through a cushion, how can you expect your message to be properly understood?