We need the spirit of Citizen Kane

A report today in The Telegraph explores the views of a SAGE insider (a key government advisor who specialises in behavioural science) who explains that the UK Government has deliberately emphasised the threat from Covid-19 without putting the risks in sufficient context, leaving the country in “a state of heightened anxiety”.  They also claim that “inflated fear levels will be responsible for the ‘collateral’ deaths of many thousands of people with non-Covid illnesses” who are “too frightened to attend hospital”.  Think about that for a moment.  A Government, with the explicit aim of protecting public health, has unleashed a relentless fear campaign, perhaps the biggest and most expensively sustained propaganda exercise in British history, to scare vulnerable people so much that they have wittingly (not unwittingly) caused many thousands of additional deaths in the process. Listening to Talk Sport while writing these words almost every single advert tells me to hide at home, fear family members, cover my face and stay safe.  

Normally, we would hope that the UK media would have challenged the Government in its approach at some point over the past twelve months. But almost the only challenge from the tabloids, broadsheets, and mainstream news outlets such as the BBC, ITV and Sky News has been of a particular uniform perspective; that the Government has not been draconian enough, that we should have lockdown earlier, longer, harder and been even more punitive in our treatment of those sceptical of the value of closing the economy for a year and ‘furloughing’ 11 million people.  The popular TV shows like GMTV and the risible Piers Morgan have been particularly apocalyptic and unrelenting in their laceration of any musician, business owner, commentator, or politician who might suggest that we should “open up”, make a personal choice about risk, or even (this week) feel able to sunbathe on a beach without wearing a mask. The bill for our incarceration – currently at about £330 billion, has gone unquestioned by almost all media outlets.   So much then for the “fourth estate”.

Some glimmer of hope seems to be on the horizon [not in terms of a change of Government approach, or policy] but UK broadcast media is likely to be “shaken up” in the near future by the launch of GB News, chaired by veteran journalist and fearsome interviewer Andrew Neil.  It looks like the editorial stance of GB News is not going to be as “extreme right wing” as the Guardian and Channel 4 have claimed; prematurely despoiling the new venture as some despicable UK version of Fox News.  Some clues have already been given by Neil, “teasing” his approach and tone through the weekly “Spectator News’ show on You Tube, which makes sense, as he is already Chairman of The Spectator. With some equivocation, The Spectator has at least provided some room for commentators who challenge the predominant narrative, so perhaps that sense of inquiry and rational debate will make it to GB News.

I would be amiss to make some cultural, creative or artistic leap of faith at this point. Well, our attention in the spring would normally be on some fantastical indulgent Hollywood (Golden Globes, Oscars) or UK BAFTA movie awards celebration.  As we have covered elsewhere on the BLOG, the movie business [particularly with shuttered theatrical distribution] is being disrupted within an inch of its life.  The industry will re-emerge post-COVID irrevocably changed.  So it seemed appropriate that the film that is making all the waves this year is based upon one of Hollywood’s earliest moments and a debut Director’s film probably unmatched in 80 years since; the film Mank, based on the screenwriting adventures of  Herman J. Mankiewicz (played by Gary Oldman), as he punches out the script for the movie that would become Citizen Kane.  I’ve not seen Oldman’s homage to Orson Welles masterpiece yet, but it did make me reach for the original inspiration.  Kane launches a newspaper and puts his “declaration of principles” in a box on the Front Page.  The UK news media has palpably failed the British public in the past year. I hope someone shows the same clip of Kane’s principled launch to Andrew Neil and his colleagues at GB News.