Love or Hate Us

I have an important question for you. Do you like us?

Journalists, that is. Do you trust us? Or, like our Prime Minister Tony Blair, do you feel that the media is like a feral beast, hunting like a pack, tearing people and their reputations to pieces?

Mr. Blair, who is of course stepping down in a couple of weeks, paused on his way out to stick the boot into the people who have given him so much trouble over his decade in power -- the members of the media. They wanted sensation above all else, he said -- they had forgotten the old standards, and their treatment not just of politicians but of all those in public office had sapped the country's confidence and self belief.

Now it would be easy to say that Mr. Blair had caused the damage himself by his constant attempts to manipulate the media. By the way his press officers tried to spin every story in the last ten years into a good news story. Well, most of his opponents have indeed made that point and ignored his central argument.

But there is a real issue here. And it all began, as so many of our troubles do, with YOU. Yes, that's right America, once again, it's all your fault. Because, let's face it, it was Watergate which has defined all modern political journalism for you and for us. That awful moment when we stopped trusting our politicians to tell the truth.

And according to Mr. Blair, it led us to view every mistake not as incompetence but as a conspiracy. That attitude has now infected the public as well. Every government proposal is greeted with a chorus of derision and cynicism. And the politicians themselves are down there in the public esteem along with used car salesmen and journalists.

No one in this country seems to believe anything the politicians say, no one trusts their motives. Many people do not trouble to vote -- those who can be bothered do so in a kind of quiet despair. There is an all-pervasive disillusion with polticians and the entire political process in our country, and I suspect in yours.

Our fault, their fault, your fault? I leave it to you. Happliy for Mr. Blair, I am not the kind of journalist who tells you what to think.
by Peter Allen