Nick Robinson's rage video - and the question of free speech for whom?

I came across the news that Nick Robinson, the BBC's political editor, had lost his temper via a Twitter link to his blog. To save you looking it up, here is how he reports and explains what happened:

'If you were watching the 6 O'Clock News last night, you may have seen a "Troops Out" sign on a large pole being waved behind my head.

'I have a confession. After the news was over, I grabbed the sign and ripped it up - apparently you can watch video of my sign rage in full glorious technicolour on the web. I lost my temper and I regret that. However, as I explained afterwards to the protesters who disrupted my broadcast, there are many opportunities to debate whether the troops should be out of Afghanistan without the need to stick a sign on a long pole and wave it in front of a camera.

I am a great believer in free speech but I also care passionately about being able to do my job reporting and analysing one of the most important political stories for years.'

As he didn't provide a link to where the video can be seen, you can now watch it here:


My complaint about Mr Robinson
Although I don't have much of a problem with what Mr Robinson did, regular readers of this blog will know that I do have a problem with the fact that he prefers the sound of his own voice to those of the people in the news he's supposed to be reporting on. This manifests itself in his constantly telling us what politicians are saying rather than letting us, the viewers, hear and judge for ourselves what they are saying (for more on which, see selection of posts below).

He's not the only BBC reporter who does this, as I noted during their coverage of the US presidential TV debates (in a post on Mediated speeches - whom do we really want to hear? ) which included the following observation:

'.. the reporter was speaking for 2.4 minutes compared with 30 seconds each for the two candidates-- i.e. the BBC forced its viewers to listen to more than twice as much media commentary as we were allowed to hear from the the candidates themselves.'

If he knows there's a problem, why doesn't he do something about it?
The odd thing is that John Rentoul of the Independent on Sunday says that there was a time when Robinson was fully aware of the problem:

'when I worked with Nick at the BBC, we did some reporting on the way in which modern politics was mediated through ever shorter sound bites selected by journalists. Things have changed since, not least because of the internet, which means anyone can watch all of Brown's short speech on their computer. But should we have to?' (full report by John Rentoul HERE).

Needless to say, I don't think that we should have to. The trouble is that Robinson's passionate belief in free speech seems to be rather too narrowly concentrated on preserving his own freedom of speech:

'I am a great believer in free speech but I also care passionately about being able to do my job reporting and analysing one of the most important political stories for years' (N. Robinson, 21 October 2010).

Other posts on Nick Robinson's reportage and mediation:
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Osborne takes a leaf out of Gordon Brown's bluffer's guide to budget speeches

If George Osborne's objective yesterday was to pack so much detail into his spending review statement and rattle through it so quickly that no one had time to take much of it in, it must be heralded as a great success: clearly he learnt a lot from having to listen to so many budget speeches by Gordon Brown.

Reading so quickly means that you can't help stumbling on a few words here and there, and makes it too much of a risk to look up from your script very often or for longer than a split second or two. So all Mr Osborne was able to manage were slight glances away about once every 34 words.

On the three occasions when David Cameron raised his right had to his mouth, I couldn't help wondering whether he was trying to hide or suppress a yawn. And there were a number of moments when it began to look as though Nick Clegg was about to nod off, if he hadn't already done so.

As an exercise, you might like have a go at watching this 3 minute sequence through to the end and then try jotting down all the key points you can remember from it ....

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Twittering journalists: the much followed reluctant followers

Earlier today, I followed a link on Twitter via @MartinShovel (to whom thanks) that led me to FRIENDorFOLLOW, a useful resource that enables you to tell at a glance which of the people you're 'following' on Twitter are (or are not) following you.

Although I 'follow' quite a number of journalists, it had never occurred to me to check on which of them might be following me. Quite a while ago, however, I'd noticed a couple of things about the way they use Twitter:
  1. They do quite a lot of 'chatting' between themselves.
  2. They don't seem to make as much use of the RT function on Twitter (even between themselves) as many of the other people I follow.
Inspired by FRIENDorFOLLOW, I've just done a bit of research into how journalists are using Twitter. Although they're very keen on tweeting news of their latest articles, broadcasts and blogs, they're not very keen at all on 'following' others.

'Follow' : 'Follower' ratios
The results from ten randomly selected British journalists can be inspected in the table below, from which you'll see that, in absolute numbers, Andrew Rawnsley of The Observer is the most diligent 'follower' - though the 262 people he 'follows' only amount to 2.2% of his 12,810 followers.

Top score on this ratio goes to Steve Richards of The Independent, who follows 4.8% of his 1,806 followers. Bottom score is BBC political editor Nick Robinson, who only follows 1 person (@WilHarris, who describes himself as a 'Recovering journalist. Certified media addict. Alleged entrepreneur').

Journalist

Follows

Followers

%

Steve Richards (Independent)

Benedict Brogan (Telegraph)

John Rentoul(Independent)

Andrew Rawnsley (Observer)

Paul Mason (BBC)

Jonathan Freedland(Guardian)

Daniel Finkelstein (Times)

Jon Sopel (BBC)

Laura Kuenssberg (BBC)

Nick Robinson (BBC)

87

166

138

262

77

88

75

58

241

1

1,806

4,622

4,733

12,081

4,578

5,744

7,087

6,545

32,505

22,598

4.8

3.6

2.9

2.2

1.7

1.5

1.0

0.9

0.74

0.004


(Thanks to observant journalist Jonathan Freedland for drawing my attention to an error involving a misplaced decimal point that had put Ms Kuenssberg top of the table when it was originally posted. This has now been been corrected).

Who are followed by journalists?
Although more research is needed on this, the initial results came up with the unsurprising finding that the overwhelming majority of those followed by journalists are other journalists, political bloggers and politicians past and present.

So should the rest of us carry on following them if they don't follow us?
This depends entirely on what you want or are hoping to get from Twitter. But I certainly don't have any immediate plans to go into a huff and 'un-follow' all those journalists who are misguided enough not follow me (i.e. most of them) - for a number of reasons:
  1. Following them is an easy way to keep up with what columnists and commentators are saying (except, of course, those hiding behind The Times's paywall).
  2. Sometimes their articles are interesting enough to inflict on your other followers via an RT.
  3. The possibility of using Twitter's @Journalist'sName 'reply' facility means that you're in with a chance of letting them know what you think about what they're saying.
  4. The same facility also means that you can try to draw their attention to your latest blog posts. Most of the time, of course, they take no notice - but you only need an occasional RT from one of them to see a massive increase in the numbers visiting your own blog, some of whom may actually be tempted to become regular readers.
  5. And that's good enough for me.
P.S. More promising numbers:
Since posting this earlier today, I'm grateful to a number of journalists for responding to and/or showing an interest in the above table. Interestingly, all of them score much higher on the Follow:Follower ratio than any of those in Table (1) above.

Matt Roper - @mattjroper - digital news editor of STV is way ahead of the field and is the only journalist I've come across (so far) who follows more people than those who follow him. Earlier in the day, he'd tweeted "Far too many journalists use Twitter to talk rather than listen."

Mr Roper's only serious contender, Neal Mann - @fieldproducer - who also tweeted '..only following a small number really misses the point of Twitter', is another digital specialist - which probably explains why they are both so far ahead of journalists specialising in print and broadcasting media:

Journalist

Follows

Followers

%

Matt Roper (STV)

Neal Mann (Sky News)

Patrick O’Flynn (Express)

Mary Ann Sieghart (Independent)

1,878

1,730

207

266

1,307

2,356

930

1,427

144.0

73.4

22.25

18.6
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Clapping out the conference season

Thirty years on since I first got interested in how applause works in speeches, I'm still adding gems to my collection of video clips. This year's star exhibit came when the accountability of clapping (or not) became headline news with David Miliband's reproach to Harriet Harman for applauding his brother's declaration that something she'd voted for was wrong.



It reminded me of a fascinating moment from the Thatcher era, when the accountability of not applauding in the right places was highlighted by Peter Snow in a Newnight interview with Francis Pym:



Viewing applause as 'anthropologically strange
When people ask me how I came to do the research that changed my life (see Our Masters' Voices and the Claptrap saga, links to which are listed HERE), my answer is that I was merely trying to follow one of the central pieces of methodological advice from the founders of ethnomethodology and conversation analysis.

According to them, the starting point for escaping from the limitations of the hypotehetico-deductive model of science that had held (and continues to hold) sociology and psychology back was to follow the maxim: try to view the familiar and the ordinary as 'anthropologically strange', no matter how mundane it may be.

To give you an idea of what this means (and by way of bringing my posts on this year's conference season to a suitable close) I've spliced together some close-ups of audiences in action over the past few weeks.

Before watching it, imagine that you're a Martian anthropologist. You've just been beamed down to earth on your first mission of exploration, you've arrived in the middle of an audience at a party conference and this is what you see. Then ask yourself what, if anything, you'd make of what members of this alien species are doing:


A research project?
If, having watched it, you're wondering why it ends with an artificially extended sequence of Michael Gove in action, it's because I think there might be something going on here worth further examination. Having watched it several times (!), I get the impression that there could be a connection between his eye-blinking and the rhythm of his hand movements.

As it happens, I have neither the time nor the inclination to pursue it further. But if anyone else can be bothered, I'd be fascinated to know what, if anything, you come up with.

This year's conference season posts:
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Conference season competition results

Blog readers were invited to suggest one object that any of the three main party leaders could use as a visual aid to strike a chord with their audience during their 2010 conference speeches.

Thanks to everyone for submitting so many excellent ideas for objects that party leaders could/should have used as visual aids during their conference speeches. The delay in announcing the winner reflects how difficult the judge has found it to reach a decision.

Most of the entries can be seen in the comments section at the bottom of the blog page where the competition was first announced (HERE).

As you'll see, the year of the Milibands inspired quite a few puns about rubber and elastic. Even more interesting was the recurrence of scissors and shears, as it underlined just how striking the images struck by the Archbishop of York and Margaret Thatcher had been in the pre-competition videos HERE.

Entries via Twitter included:
One from Martin Shovel suggested that David Cameron should use a hearing aid. I appreciate that he may have been trying to make a political point here, but was rather disappointed to see him making the common error of thinking that 'listening' and 'hearing' are the same thing. In any case, his entry had to be disqualified as a flagrant breach of the rules, which were quite explicit in specifying visual aids.

Another from Charles Crawford suggested that Ed Miliband should hold up glove puppets of Sooty and Sweep to symbolise his relationship with the trades unions. Nice idea, Charles, but Miliband's 'new generation' are far too young to remember such ancient TV celebrities, so I fear the point would have been completely lost on them!

Prize winners
  1. Hadleigh Roberts: Labour speaker holds up a copy of LibDem 2010 manifesto and says "Remember this? They don't."
  2. Colin McLean: Ed Miliband holds up an elastic band and says "This keeps the coalition together, for now. To keep the country together you need a Miliband. Better still, two."
  3. Jon Hindmarsh: Cameron brandishes a red banana with a map of Iraq on it - to symbolise the Miliband of Brothers.
Special Brown Nose Award
  • Andrew B: Party leader [of your choice] after rapturous applause holds up a copy of Lend Me Your Ears and acknowledges their deep debt to the author.
Modesty prevented me from awarding Andrew the first prize, but wasn't enough to stop me from sharing it with a wider audience. The least he deserves is a signed copy of his recommended visual aid as a token of the author's deep debt to him.

Prizewinners:
To receive your prize, please email your postal address address via 'my complete profile' on the left or contact page on the Atkinson Communications website.

The winner of the third prize may opt for a copy of Speech-making and Presentation Made Easy in stead of ВЫСТУПАТЬ ЛЕГКО (the Russian edition of Lend Me Your Ears), as originally advertised.

And if you missed my posts during the conference season:
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