Making News

So, Gordon Brown isn't going to call a General Election. Apparently this represents an 'embarrassing U-turn' for the Prime Minister. According to the news programmes he's lost face and damaged his standing with the public. Hmmm. The funny thing about this is that speculation over a possible October/November election was fuelled entirely by the press. They were the ones who started talking it up when Labour started moving ahead in the polls. I don't recall Brown or any of his Ministers ever floating the idea of an early election. It was the press that started telling us that the Labour party was going on 'an election footing', employing extra staff and so on. Did they? I don't know. Even if they did, it still doesn't mean that an election announcement was imminent. Again, it was the press that kept telling us that various policy announcements and Brown's visit to Iraq were all sure signs that the government was contemplating an election. Obviously, government's never simply try and steal the limelight from the opposition's annual conference by announcing new policies and the like, do they?

That's the trouble these days, the media isn't content to just report the news, they now want to make it as well. All this election speculation wasn't helped by the plethora of so-called experts employed by the papers and TV to 'interpret' the activities of politicians for us. Straightforward reporting isn't enough, it seems. 'In depth analysis' is also required. Frankly, I'd like to hear and see a lot less of these 'experts'. Like most people, I'm quite capable of drawing my own conclusions about the news. Indeed, when I hear the likes of John Humphrys wittering on about how it essential that the Today programme isn't affected by proposed BBC spending cuts - they should axe BBC3 instead, apparently - I feel nothing but despair. We need less of these preening prima donnas, stoking their own egos by 'grilling' elected representatives and interpreting their every fart for us poor dumb mortals. Like Joe Friday used to say "We just want the facts". That's all we need, really. Just report the facts to us and we'll do our own analysis thank you. Then maybe we won't have to endure another day like today, with various reporters pouring scorn on the Prime Minister to cover up their own misinterpretation of events.