26.09.06
Radio Hype?
I was listening to Radio 5 this afternoon and one of the most extraordinary exchanges between interviewer and -ee was on.
The presenters were talking with Alistair Campbell. The first presenter mentioned that after the love-in going on at the Labour party convention they were receiving plenty of emails stating that Britain isn’t the utopia that TBlair was saying. Instead of stating some positives all Campbell did was to whinge that the people who sent the mails were either young conservatives or that the presenters had made them up. How very bizarre.
But then it got weirder. The other presenter butted in and said that Campbell was being rather aggressive (he was) and that there is a great malaise in Labour which was evidenced by the speech by Gordon Brown being overshadowed by what Blair’s missus was supposed to have said or not. The presenter said something like “It doesn’t matter if she did or didn’t say it”. And Campbell was off: “How can a BBC presenter say somehing like that? Of course it matters if she didn’t say it…” blah blah. What he actually meant was “It was irrelevant what she said because everyone is reporting it as fact now.”
It was an appalling blunder on the part of the presenter who’s usually a safe bet for a good interview. It wasn’t helped by Campbell’s belligerence either. Anyway the interview was cut short because it wasn’t getting anywhere after this point.
But was Campbell justfied in his anger? I reckon he is to a degree. The story that Cherie said “Liar” when Brown was talking is good political soap opera but probably wasn’t really true. But all the papers ran it either as fact or “well she probably didn’t say it but she believes it”. It was a good speech (except the now-standard Arctic Monkeys reference – wait for Cameron’s Arctic Monkey name check next week) and a crappy personality clash seems to have overshadowed it.
Is this “gossip over substance” what turns people off politics? And why do people blame the politicans for this? This has clearly been a case of the media getting over-excited.
Have fun.