Enemies of Reason Poundshop potshots at the media moral maze.

Experts and plebs

This wonderful article by Tom English at the Scotsman is well worth a read, whether you love football or not. It's a marvellous skewering of the way in which TV World Cup pundits have revelled in their own ignorance of world football, which to me is symptomatic of the way some elements of the media approach a lot of things, not just sport. As the writer says:

Before the Algeria versus Slovenia game in Group C on Sunday, Shearer seemed to be speaking for the entire BBC panel when he said, "Our knowledge of these two teams is limited." Limited! What the former England striker was saying was that he hadn't done his homework, that he hadn't spoken to any of his vast array of contacts in the game, hadn't tapped into the BBC's huge research machinery, hadn't even bothered, seemingly, to peruse the internet for some background on Algeria and Slovenia or even flick through a newspaper or a magazine. Shearer was content to sit in front of the cameras and tell the viewers that, really, he didn't know much. Hardly a revelation to those of us who have groaned our way through his anodyne commentaries in the past, but embarrassing all the same.

That's exactly it. The English article is one of those brilliant pieces that makes you realise just why you've been so annoyed with something. I've been sitting there watching the World Cup matches with a sense of irritation, not quite knowing why; but something was bugging me.

Now I realise: it was the lack of being bothered to do their actual jobs that was getting to me so much. Here are former professional footballers, paid handsomely to give an insight into World Cup football, yet they can't be bothered to do the simplest of research into the players, the teams, the grounds, the country, the tournament, anything. When one of them tries to learn something about a new player, they get laughed at by their colleagues:

In a six-and-a-half minute introduction just one player out of the 22 on show was given a name-check, and here is how it happened.

Lee Dixon: "Slovakia have got some decent players, Hamsik, the pick of them. Young player, plays on the left side."

Gary Lineker: "He's at Napoli."

Lee Dixon: "That's right."

Alan Hansen (chuckling): "Somebody gave you him, by the way."

What Hansen meant, I think, was that his colleagues must have been fed the Hamsik reference by another party, that they couldn't have come up with his name all by themselves. It's not like Dixon or Lineker produced a dossier of facts about Hamsik, a file of information on who he is and where he has been. All they did was mention his name and the fact that he was rather good. That was it. Hansen seemed to think this was worthy of a gently-mocking put-down, as if the other two were some kind of class swots. As such, he was almost revelling in his own ignorance.

Here are people who should know more than we do, but they don't. In a lot of ways, you're already ahead of them if you've bought a few packets of Panini stickers for the kids' album because you know who the players are. It shouldn't be that way. These people are being paid to be experts, yet they're sitting back and approaching every game like a pleb. They talk only about the players they've heard of - Argentina is Messi and Tevez, for example; South Korea is Ji-Sung Park - from the Premiership or the Champions League, and that's that. No bothering to look any further. There is no world of football outside of England, or the top teams in Europe - everyone else is just ballast. Just spin out some old flannel about shocking defending and put some whizzy circles around players in the replays at half-time, and that's job done. It's crass, ineffective, tedious, lacking in insight, and downright contemptuous of the vast majority of footballers and teams at the World Cup.

As a blogger, you're always going to be seen as a pleb. Which is fair enough. A lot of the time we're not experts, just enthusiastic amateurs. And there's nothing wrong with people who aren't necessarily experts making comments on subjects they haven't done a PHD in. You don't need to be a climate scientist to have a view on global warming, for example; but in order to make a coherent case that stands up to scrutiny, you have to be respectful towards the evidence, work hard at your research and understand the issues. Well, in my view, that's what you need for a coherent case, anyway. And my view is only the view of a pleb.

I think what irritates me most about all kinds of media coverage, be it of science or sport or politics, is the assumption that we're all plebs, and if you don't present something in such a way as some thicko with the attention span of a gnat will understand it while munching on a bacon sandwich, you've somehow failed. It's aiming miserably low, but time and again we see it. Every now and then you get someone like Tom English who stands up and says "Enough is enough!" and thank goodness they do; I dare say there must be dozens of frustrated journos who would love to present their stories  in a slightly complicated way, trusting the readers to have a bash at it and maybe be bright enough to grapple with something other than The Hungry Caterpillar levels of complexity, but who are constantly finding their attempts thwarted. I hope so, anyway. I like to think the best of everyone.

See, I don't think most people are plebs. Maybe they are, and I'm just being naive. But I don't. I think a lot of the people who write stuff under news stories on the web, or who phone up Jeremy Vine, are plebs, but that could well be because they're self-selecting plebs who have the time on their hands, the smouldering sense of self-righteousness and the sheer determination to get their dumbo voices heard. It might not be that they're representative of anything other than themselves.

So why treat everyone as if they are plebs? It irritates me. I'm not bloody stupid; why should people have to treat me as if I might be? Why not just aim high and trust your audience have the ability to look stuff up that they haven't heard of before, or might even appreciate things in a little more depth? I know Ben Goldacre (among others) often complains that a science story, say, in a national newspaper might be treated as if its readers are dimwits; whereas a Test cricket match in the same edition will assume plenty of knowledge, or at the very least a basic grasp of the subject. And I can see the frustration. Not just with science v sport, but news v sport, or even at times sport v sport. We're so often assumed to be mugs, maybe we end up being conditioned that way and responding as mugs. Maybe that's where the kneejerk internet comments come from, or the Bring Back the Birch Brigade on radio phone-ins. Or maybe they're all correct, and I'm the one who's in a tiny minority of wrong. Who knows. I don't. I'm just a pleb.

Somehow, though, that just won't do. I get annoyed with the mainstream media's wilful ignorance because they should be better than that, and I expect more. I don't want them to treat me like a pleb; I want them to give me a bit more credit than that. It annoys me that, at times though certainly not exclusively, I've seen bloggers be more thorough and diligent, and give their readers more credit, than journos. It shouldn't be that way. But I think bloggers research hard and know their stuff because they're conscious of being labelled as know-nothing hobbyists.

The trouble is, as I see it, experts are being diluted, when people like the Taxpayers Alliance or MigrationWatch are treated as such for the purposes of 'getting a quote' for a news story. Experts aren't there just to provide quotes to bulk out otherwise flimsy tales; I think they're there to provide analysis, insight and information. Plebs are now experts. Astroturf pressure groups become part of Government - now former TPA people are overseeing cuts for the Coalition, having been hired, at taxpayers' expense. Plebs can become experts just by calling themselves experts. I don't think that's good enough. And then you have 'experts' like the World Cup pundits who go out of their way to behave like plebs.

I think the only conclusion I can come to is this: anyone can provide insight if they've got the willingness to do the research and analysis, whether they have the background or not. I don't want all football commentators to be ex-pros. They don't have to be. Perhaps a former player has a pretty substantial head start on Dave down the pub - but if Dave down the pub bothers to do his research, while a former player just thinks he can turn up and talk about only the people he's heard of, I'd rather hear what Dave's got to say. At least he doesn't treat me like a mug.

Related posts:

1. We’re absolutely fucking clueless, admit football pundits
2. How to be a football pundit
3. I am not an expert, but…
4. Capello the immigrant and the truth about England
5. By far the greatest team