Gear 6: Nuance.
What is the nuancing of that remark? The media ask itself and a relatively regular basis. By which of course they mean three very distinct (if inter-related) things. Firstly, it is always quite possible that the question is really meant, quite genuinely. There really might be something more behind remark, some back story. Or some extra point. Secondly, there light be something linked or looped to the remark, some gossip the media body has head, that he thinks ought to be being expressed though this ream. A thirdly, and most simply it is an excuse for a story, or a bit a mischief on the behalf of the media. The problem of course is that time and time again one simply cannot tell which it. On is then invited to examine a nuance, without knowing exactly what the nuance is, or own it is operating.
This oddity in a sense is the necessary product of a system of governance and even more reporting of governance that that, throng the lobby group, is awash with extras pieces of information and silent (or merely understood) assignations. To hear what any journalist says is hear a difficult juggling act. Into journalists must report stories of course, and yet they o this in the light of a lobby system that has those stories come from the very people that they are meant to be about. That is they come from the gossiping MP’s. The journalists therefore are reporting about or telling tales upon their professional friends.: Those individuals who they meet up with, go to lunch with, or have drinks with. The entire system then evolves into a verve odd series of domains
First there are the dynamics of simple reporting; the media and the politicians remain different tribes, and define animals. One suspects there are many a Journalist and many an Mo who curses themselves for forgetting this fact. Secondly though criss crossing this differences are relationships that appear to be founded for all intense and purposes of friendships. People go out for diner or get drunk or do things. Friendship that is professionally been as a friend seem to blossom. And yet these apparent friendships are of course always crossed by the needs of the tribe and that class. They re friends on the edge: or better friends before the edge of a story.
This volatile relationship is then cut across y two elements (which make or mar the ‘friendships’. On the one hand the entire system is clearly driven by gossip. In a sense (and very much at the moment) we are governed by this gossip. Policies have log been confused with it. Or rather it forms the ‘focus’ feeler groups in which policies are suggested – a reaction watched amongst the hacks and the stories those hacks write, and the policy modified accordingly. The hacks involved might of course claim this was democracy. They after all communicating policy to the people and gage their reaction. Accept tit is no such thing. The media are of course using their privileged position in the gossip to report the gossip as fact and as part of a political sermon or agenda in their our newspaper. Feelers and gossip in then set in black and white text and used to rabble rouse or connive, The story, the gossip reported as fact is then pitched to an audience who are expected to respond ( Strange I never see any convincing figures about whether the Daily mail readers really are extremely hypochondriac, rightwing fools, I suspect from my experience of them they are no. be that as it may, because of its views but simply as something easy to read…) One papers therefore nuance the story or rabble rouses, and do so even if no rabble is roused (and the story is not listened to), It is one if the peculiarly features of the lobby system that the journalist power, s held to be self evident.
On the other hand, event cut the system, from the other ay, Politicians are then judges upon evens and their reactions to them (by the media, but also by use). The manipulation or events, the seeming to care about them, seeming to be in control or at least a part of is one of those jobs that appease o define all political success or failure at then movement, The tragedy of Brown is that he is lousy at reacting to events. This deficit is then made all the worded because the one event he though he could react to, the economy, has caught him on the hop, and revealed that even in has strongest of suites he is lacking.
Governance has then over the last twenty years or so, slipped into a government by gossip, events and a strange asymmetrical relationship between unequal friends’
Nuancing, as the media use it is then a way to précis this actually really very complex series of relating. To claim a thing is nuances it to claim to appear to claim that the story is caught up in the games of gossips and intrigue, in which carriers and polices are apparently currently constructed.
However this is where the three very different types of nuancing of course cut in and start to malinger. This malingering is then rather tricky, as t is likely enough that those who report the stories are so buried in the system that they cannot, they really cannot tell what they are doing: they have lost sight of the differences and the problems in the words they use. Hey are therefore very genuine when thy quest for nuance. That quest in a sense eyes a part f their world. it is a part of that very odd social situation the Place of Westminster founds itself within. A world of innuendo and hint: A world over nuanced.
The result is of course that those not privy to this world are caught up in that deep quandary. We, beyond the social world of Westminster essentially do not care about the social words of journalists and their media flies: Well, we do no care for it beyond their expenses. Although it will now be clear enough tat one of the things about expenses is that they re n act apart of the system itself, these expenses or at least all at food (and dink) is a part in modern government. Expenses and government then ran together, and perhaps part of the condemnation of the trivial expense as much as anything a condemnation do a system that is indeed very problematic. Be that as it may. The point is that we, who are on the outside an care not for the journalists pleasures are caught up trying to pull apart what they say, and trying to make it make sense for us.
Hereof course there is another aside to this. Journalist have over the last few years attempted to make us more interested in their world, though confessional journalism, reality shows, and media studies The journalist shave opened out, or better have attempted o drag us within. This move is very convent for them as not only does bragging or whining make very easy copy, but also in opening themselves up in this way, and having us also in their world, they are ensuring that their language and problems become common knowledge. Once this happens then the fact that they are reporting their world, with their issues and their problems, when what they ought to be doing I reporting a world we want to see ceases to be a problem.
This last remake fixes in a sense the problem with such words as nuancining. They forms as it were an untended gear between two distinct world. On the one hand there is the world of h media, and the politicians who thy are caught up in. This world clearly does not much care about the three fold divisions of naming I drew up at the start of this essay. I is after all a feature of all gossip and all focus groups that the naming of the question or the story in a sense creates the story. N reporting as nuanced fact and as a story, a series of conversations or a interviews, and running in the light of the nauncing, the journalists are simply behaving as they would in their own social circle. Hat is they are doing what comes natural in the odd world they find themselves within, a world where one report (or sneak) on ones ‘friends’ to exist at all (and thy want you to s report).
The trouble, as ever in British politics is us. We do not understand this From our position downstream of the synthetic nuancing, we are trouble our inability to work out what is going on. Here of course we are caught up in our own asymmetries members of the public essentially, make a he error. We want to assume that politicians and the media are actually different creatures. To be a journalist ought to be one thing, and to be a politician ought to be another, we define our relation an our rejection and support in clearly different why and according to different criteria. To support a party is often enough to be reacting violently against the other party (or rather the small cabal that runs that party), or else it is to be reacting in the face of events to praise or condemn. What is more there is a real distance here. To be in a situation where at times one must condemn a part of the population is to keep oneself apart from them. On odes not want to get too close to the politicians in case they prove themselves bounders or fools.
Or relationship with journalist in then clearly different. We might loath them, and yet listen to them. We might never read them and yet claim to like them. We might well (and man do0 buy a newspaper and discreet with almost everything it. He relationship is lacks the tapping of master an servant, and is rather between friends or at least colleagues. He journalists are 9orhave become at least) to bugger in the pub whose conversation we are listening to half willing. We laugh, we reject or thinks about that they say, therefore without ever thinking they ought to be above us or govern us. Their power is then the power of chumminess.
Given this division we as a population, rather worried about where the nuancing of the story ought to be, Is it the nuance of the story of the policies. That I does a story really relate to something that ‘our political masters’ are doing or saying; Or else is it the mere bar speculation of the media. That is what the block in the pub is saying? Or else (and far worst) is it a mixture of the two?
This quandary is then made all the more hard to call by two additional factors. On the one hand d beyond this problem of different relations, we want or rather feel we must have some kind offering, some kind or actual relationship with our politicians. We might then judge them differently to he manner in which we judge the media, and yet in that judging they become a name (Christian or surname0. They become then a part in day to day mental furniture. A name to braise to blame; a totemic akin to a spirit. We currently condemn Gordon Brown almost as if he were a bad spirit. Everything he does festers and ring ruin, We long of the day he will be banished. And we long for such a day with the same passions, as ten we ago we felt for Tony Blair, who then could do little or no real wrong (in spite of dodgy funding deals, and problematic wars…) Our democracy therefore demands that our politicians are their as spirits for us. The media in this guise are then the press of this sprit. They summon it up, and tells of its nature, they nuance it for us. In short they stand as intermediator between us and that world of spirits of political animals we ache after. To nuance is therefore to invoke and to play with the spirits.
On the other hand of course one needs t bare in mind that the media are actually paid by their ability to build Nuance and construct stories. Those stores can be real, but very few journalists are sacked if they are not. All they need to have a credence and not o be too demonstrability false. If they are then the journalist will of course be in real trouble. But then one needs to be a peerless Moron to run with such a story in the first place. The art of the journalist or the modern cheque hungry one, is the art of ensuring that the stories the scares, one runs with gather their own momentum and so. From this perspective o nuance a story in to climb aboard the gravy chain Other media hacks will jump upon that nuancing and report also the fact that you reported it. One can advance the story further or hollow it out differently. To nuance an interview is then to inhabit it. To make it the story that lasts days, or sends out feelers o other stories, or binds the whole lot together or anything. Nuancing s then very much a part f the modern media and their need for endless (often rather pointless) stories, campaigns and investigations.
In short nauncing as good gar stands at the bridge f many worlds. It serves o force those world together or perhaps better, it serves as pointer of transliteration; the conditions to be paid so that the one world, of unequal realties, gossip and event may be transformed into a veritable and lucrative money making enterprise.
