Max Atkinson's Blog

With video evidence like this from News International, what are the police waiting for?

Establishing who in News International knew what and paid how much to whom for hacking which phones will presumably keep the police busy for quite a while. But why are they waiting to press charges against at least two of those who paid the police for information?

After all, this video evidence - legally obtained as they answered questions at a parliamentary select committee in 2003 - of CEO Rebekah Brooks and former News of the World editor Andy Coulson admitting that they paid police for information has been on the record for years.

At the time of writing this post, the above clip has been viewed 52,891 times on YouTube (up, interestingly, by more than 2,000 since yesterday) - and I find it difficult to believe that none of the viewers were officers of the Metropolitan Police.

So, if paying the police for information is illegal, how come neither of these people has been charged with committing the offence which both of them so openly admitted to all those years ago?

James Murdoch backs Rebekah Brooks, but not without pausing every 2 seconds

"Apparently, James Murdoch went to the School of Lawyerish Non-speak, and passed with high honors!"

Denise Graveline (@dontgetcaught) via Twitter, yesterday.

I've blogged before about something that conversation analysts call 'pre-delicate hitches' (for more examples of which, see the list of posts below).

‘Hitches’ are things like pauses, ‘ers’ and ‘ums', restarts of a word that had been aborted, etc. They tend to occur at points in a conversation where you're leading towards a topic or a word (or it could be news, gossip, a swear word, obscenity, joke, etc.) that's likely to come across as rather delicate, controversial or even offensive to whomsoever you happen to be talking to.

The general argument is that we use such ‘hitches’ to let our hearer(s) know that we know that they too might find what we're saying rather 'delicate'.

One pause every two seconds

So I wasn't at all surprised to see that James Murdoch's backing of Rebekah Brooks yesterday (a delicate topic if ever there was one) was punctuated by 24 pauses in 48 seconds - although, like Denise Graveline (above), I was fairly appalled by his use of transparent and proactive 'lawyerish non-speak'.

Apart from the high pause rate in this particular clip, I also enjoyed "I am satisfied" and "I think", neither of which sounded as confident or certain as he perhaps should have done under the circumstances. Note also the slight hesitation "are-are.." before coming up with his assessment of her standard of ethics and conduct as "very good".

The question put to Murdoch (3.40 seconds into the full 16 minute interview HERE) was the interviewer's second attempt to get an answer:

"My question was is it really conceivable - you're asking people, in looking people in they eye and saying 'look, she and others in her position did not know that you were paying out enormous sums of money to these people' and what I'm saying is 'is that really conceivable?'"

After delaying for about 1 second, Murdoch starts to reply (slash marks in the transcript below indicate pauses of different duration):

Murdoch: "I am satisfied ///that Rebekah//her leadership of this business//and her//standard of ethics/and her standard of conduct/throughout her career//are-are very good/and I think/ what she's shown and what what we have shown//with our actions//around/transparently and proactively working with the police//Recall/it's the///process of information discovery//that we went through//proactively and voluntarily/that actually started these investigations /to be opened again by the police//earlier this year//It's the proactive and transparent handing over of information to the police/to aid them in their inquiries around payments to the police and things like that actually/she has led/and this company has led."

Related posts on pre-delicate hitches

96% of BBC television news of phone-hacking ignored the House of Commons debate

My optimism about the televising of the phone-hacking debate in the House of Commons yesterday was, as I feared, short-lived (HERE). I'd ended my post on it with an open question about Chris Bryant, M.P., whose speech had opened proceedings.

"Whether or not we'll get to see any more of him (or any of the other speakers in the debate) on prime-time television news programmes tonight, of course, remains to be seen..."

Answer = 36 seconds

Impressive speech though Bryant's may have been, only 14 seconds of it made it on to BBC 's News at 10 last night (still available HERE on iPlayer). And all we got to see from the other speakers in the debate was 22 seconds of the speech by Tom Watson, M.P. Of the Attorney General's speech, we saw 0 seconds.

So a paltry 4% of the 15 minutes of news devoted to the News of the World phone-hacking scandal came from the important debate between our elected members of parliament.

PMQs more important than a proper parliamentary debate?

If the weekly exchanges between the prime minister and leader of the opposition count as 'speeches', the BBC showed us more than twice as much of Cameron (46 seconds) and Miliband (38 seconds) in action than of Bryant and Watson in the main debate - i.e. nearly 10% of the 15 minutes on phone-hacking.

And this is one of the (many) things that strikes me as so depressing about the media's coverage of politics. Compared with the rowdy Punch & Judy show of prime minister's question time, yesterday's debate (on the same subject) showed our MPs at their best - making serious and carefully argued points in a very reasonable and civilised manner.

With the BBC preferring to broadcast (at our expense) rowdiness rather than reason from the House of Commons, is it any wonder that our politicians are held in such low repute?

Meanwhile, "the BBC encourages you to embed its video and audio on your website" (as we're told in the instructions at Democracy Live).

This raises the interesting question of whether the BBC has decided not to bother showing much from speeches on its prime-time news programmes because anyone with a computer can watch the whole 3 hour debate online (as here):

Phone-hacking debate brings speeches back to our TV screens - at least for a few hours

After years of writing and blogging about the reluctance of British television news programmes to broadcast much from speeches (e.g. HERE & HERE), I was delighted that, for today at least, we were allowed to watch the House of Commons debate on phone-hacking live, continuously and without any intervention by reporters telling us what the speakers were saying - and to be able do so simultaneously on three channels, BBC News 24, BBC Parliament and Sky News.

It's a very long time since this has happened, and I'm hoping that it could mark a significant change in the attitude of broadcasters towards speeches and doesn't merely turn out to be a rare exception that proves a rule.

Given my suggestion that interviews have taken over from speeches as the main means of political communication in the UK as a result of collusion between politicians and the media, I was particularly struck by the first 30 seconds of this clip from the opening speech by Chris Bryant, M.P., who also seems worried about our politicians colluding with the media.

Whether or not we'll get to see any more of him (or any of the other speakers in the debate) on prime-time television news programmes tonight, of course, remains to be seen...

P.S. You can now watch the whole of this 3 hour debate (and find out how much of it was shown on BBC Television's News at 10) in the next blog post HERE.

American woman rises to the occasion with a speech on 4th July

I know that there are other bloggers like Angela DeFinis (@AngelaDeFinis) and Marion Chapsal (@marionchapsal), who are always on the lookout for examples of effective speech-making and presentation by women leaders.

Previously, I've posted some thoughts on former prime minister Margaret Thatcher and Facebook COO Cheryl Sandberg.

Today, at the unveiling of a statue of Ronald Reagan outside the US embassy in London, the speech by Condoleezza Rice (above) struck me as being both just right for the occasion and well-worth adding to my collection.

Is bronze the best way to commemorate Ronald Reagan, even on 4th July?

With Twitter and the blogosphere (in the UK) full of murmers about the pros and cons of Americans in London marking both the 4th July and Ronald Reagan's centenary by placing a statue of him outside the US embassy in Grosvenor Square, I thought I'd put on record (again) my admiration of him as a great speaker.

As far as I'm concerned, I don't have any strong feelings about whether such a statue of him is a good idea, other than that bronze does not strike me as being as appropriate a medium for commemorating a great communicator as video.

Back in April, on what would have been his 100th birthday, I recommended any serious student of public speaking to read and learn from a blog by former Reagan speechwriter Clark Judge (HERE), and have reproduced some extracts from that earlier post below the following selection of 'must-sees' from the maestro, starting with the speech that first brought him to wider public notice, three years before he became Governor of California in 1967.

1. The Speech, 1964

2. Pointe du Hoc, 40th anniversary of D-day, 1984

3. Mondale's youth and inexperience, 1984

4. Challenger disaster, 1986

5. Tear down this wall, Berlin, 1987

6. How to recover if the teleprompter lets you down (on which, more HERE)

FROM MY EARLIER BLOG POST:

Under-estimated by the British?

The case of Ronald Reagan is an interesting one, because his appeal never seemed to go down as well on British ears as it did on those of his fellow Americans. Whether this was because his presidency coincided with the success of ITV's satirical puppet show Spitting Image, in which the then president was regularly featured as being a bit short in the brain department, I do not know.

But what I do know is that the writers and producers of Spitting Image were not alone among British audiences and commentators in underestimating Reagan's achievements, both as a communicator and as a politician.

That's why I've always been fascinated by him and by talking to and reading articles by people who actually knew him - and is also why I'd recommend speechwriters and anyone else with a serious interest in communication the read Clark Judge's article on Ronald Reagan at 100.

Meanwhile, and by way of a taster, here are a few extracts from the article likely to be of special interest to speechwriters:

Analyse the audience
Former Reagan aide and speechwriter, now California congressman, Dana Rohrabacher, tells of a campaign stop involving a grade school class of blind children. After reporters had left for their bus, Reagan stayed behind and asked the teacher if the children would like to feel his face. The teacher said they would be thrilled. So for a few minutes, without publicity, the children got to “see” him in the only way they could.

Storytelling
Reagan’s storytelling was part of his public persona. In speeches, he used humor and anecdotes to make points. But in small gatherings, what might be called an economy of the story (that is, an exchange of value) was often at play. White House aides would become exasperated in meetings with outsiders as the president told tales they had sat through frequently before. They never considered the dynamics of those meetings. The president heard whatever the visitors had come to say. He absorbed their information, opinions, or requests (the value he derived from the meeting). Meanwhile, his stories left his guests feeling responded to and confided in (the value they derived). He did this without saying anything that might surprise or embarrass him if it appeared in the press, or that committed him to policies he might think better of later. Both sides gained. He risked nothing.

Preparation
Reagan had numerous devices for controlling risk. These included the famous staff-prepared talking points for even trivial events and the tape on each stage floor telling him where to stand. He expected staff to think through every detail of an appearance.

It was widely known that the formal White House staffing system put the president last in line to see most speech drafts. Few knew that he put himself first for reviewing the most sensitive addresses, especially ones dealing with the Soviet Union. This was true of at least one of the Soviet-specific speeches I drafted. It was true of Peter Robinson’s 1987 “Tear Down This Wall” draft. Only after the president had seen them were the texts distributed, when, for Soviet speeches in particular, furious fights often developed. With others carrying the battle, the president would remain politically untouched. But he had already set the boundaries for an acceptable outcome. In the case of “Tear Down This Wall,” the chief and deputy chief of staff, communications director, and speechwriters knew he had marked as untouchable the call for dismantling the Berlin Wall—but only they knew.'

Ed Miliband lands on a snake

The Snakes & Ladders theory of political communication strikes again

Eighteen months ago, I asked the question 'do interviews ever deliver anything but bad news for politicians?' as a prelude to summarising the Snakes and Ladders theory of political communication, first aired in a joint paper by John Heritage and me at a conference on the 1987 general election.

The general argument was that speeches work like 'ladders' that can move politicians up towards a winning position on the board, whereas interviews work like 'snakes' that can only move them downwards (for more on which see links below).

Miliband lands on a snake

Twitter and the blogosphere have been so alive with negative comments about this interview with Ed Miliband on yesterday's public sector strikes (see samples below) that it must surely count as a classic case of a politician suffering from landing on a snake - and it will certainly be included among my specimens if I ever have the chance of giving an updated version of the original paper.

It is also one of the reasons why I continue to be baffled by the willingness of British politicians to go along with the decision of the British media to banish oratory to the sidelines and put interviews in pole position.

What neither the media nor politicians seem to understand is that most interviews are utterly tedious for audiences and can be extremely risky for interviewees - as Mr Miliband and his supporters have been finding out the hard way.

Tweets on the interview from Labour supporters
"Repetition is a key rhetorical device, but this is bonkers! It's the WEIRDEST political interview I've ever seen!" - @MartinShovel

"Ed shoot the adviser who told you to stick to the message & keep repeating it - I think they might be a plant from Tory HQ. What a disaster!" - @MartinShovel

"This video has been viewed a frankly embarrassing number of times on LabourList and God knows how many times on the bbc" - @Markfergusonuk

"We're not arguing that it went viral for a good reason" - @Markfergusonuk

Blogs on the interview worth a read

Was Milliband set up by BBC? - Alex Folkes (LibDem supporter)
Ed Miliband's media fail - Shane Greer (Tory supporter)

MORE ON THE 'SNAKES & LADDERS THEORY OF POLITICAL COMMUNICATION

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