Right-wing media dumb down migration
To win space and airtime you have to dog-whistle, writes George Pitcher
Any national newspaper columnist has been there. It’s morning editorial conference and we’re pitching ideas for the op-ed pages. We’re bound to know a bit about the subject we’re talking about – that’s why we’re there – and that will usually mean that our grasp of it is both more nuanced and informed than opinions from the rest of the table. And so we compromise our take on it a bit, incorporating some of the balder and babyish statements from colleagues.
It’s happened to me on a right-wing paper, as most them are. What I thought was a fresh angle for a comment on religious free speech was greeted by the deputy editor enthusiastically as an opportunity to rail against the arrest of a Birmingham priest for “praying silently” outside an abortion clinic.
As it happens, I believe “praying silently” can be an act of intimidation against vulnerable, possibly traumatised women as much as placard waving from a mob of pro-life demonstrators. But I included it as example of a breach of free speech so that my column won space on the page against strong competition. It’s the sort of journalistic trade-off I wouldn’t make now, as I’m too old and irascible. But I can spot it when it happens.
“Lefty bishops are wrong…”
Examples are legion, so it’s perhaps unfair to alight upon one. But my eye was caught by a headline a few days ago in the Daily Telegraph: “Lefty bishops are wrong: Reducing immigration can be an act of love,” by Tim Stanley. Lefty bishops? Really? He won’t have written the headline and I admire Tim’s work, so I don’t want to be harsh, but the body copy that followed was a classic of the conservative media’s rivalries to be prolier-than-thou in garnering populist clicks for the most wildly overblown political issue of our time (asylum seekers in small boats comprise less than 5 per cent of total immigration).
It was off the back of a Sky News interview on immigration with Stephen Cottrell, Archbishop of York, who is understudy for Canterbury as Church of England leader until a proper one is appointed (How long, O Lord?). Tim started by saying that Cottrell “could’ve been leader of the Lib Dems, though Ed Davey talks more about God”, which is a good gag but untrue.
“Jesus says share your wine-gums”
He goes on to assert “What use are these Anglican interventions? Zero”, before dog-whistling an “open doors, open hearts” approach which Cottrell hadn’t invoked, continues to paraphrase him as expressing “reduced apologetics” that amount to “Jesus says share your wine-gums”, before claiming that “adult politicians borrow this goo-goo-gah-gah language to make themselves sound jolly nice, too.”
Eventually, Tim moves upmarket. He adumbrates Augustine’s orda amoris, or the correct ordering of love, which posits that “we cannot help all people at once, so we must apply a sense of priority”, while then stating that some “in the conservative parish have enjoyed the Epping protests; I did not” because if “refugees are booted out of hotels, where are they supposed to go?” (quite), before concluding that Cottrell is “no dunce” for defending asylum seekers. All of which, I suspect, is what Tim, who is no dunce, wanted to write in the first place, but had to nose on the goo-goo-gah-gah stuff to satisfy the tribe.
Christian response is Cottrell’s job
I hold no particular candle for Cottrell. I thought he had a bad war against child sexual abuse in the Church and probably should have resigned alongside Justin Welby of Canterbury. But what he said in the interview was that Nigel Farage’s “kneejerk” responses to immigration would have no good long-term effect until the root causes of mass migration were addressed, with some compassion for those victims of its causes. That kind of Christian response is Cottrell’s job, as Tim eventually and generously concedes in his column.
Columnists, even churched and educated ones such as Tim, don’t matter other than the influence they exert on those media commentators who aren’t. Perhaps the kindest thing to say is those at the shallower of the media gene pool shouldn’t be encouraged.
Nodding donkey in Union Jack vest
Take TalkTV, where Jonathan Gullis, who is literally a former Conservative minister and Mayor of Kidsgrove, accused Cottrell of “hypocrisy” because he’d been criticised for his handling of a child-abuser and was now expressing an opinion on immigration (connection, go figure). He interviewed a nodding-donkey councillor in a union-jack vest, who opined that Cottrell should “stick to the day job”, which is “spreading the word of the Lord”. This budding theologian must have skipped the scripture class that covered “love your neighbour as yourself.”
It’s a couple of generations since the Church of England was routinely described as the Conservative Party at prayer. But, do you know, I’m rather missing it. At least they knew what doctrines underpinned our western polities. That’s all gone now. So long as thoughtful commentators join the race to the bottom of right-wing politics, only the slack jaws can triumph.
George Pitcher is a visiting fellow at the LSE and an Anglican priest