What is wrong with the Press in the UK?

What is wrong with the press in this country? I listened to Nick Ferrari on LBC (97.3 FM) this morning on the way into work, he was interviewing John Redwood (Former Cabinet Minister, Current MP for Wokingham) and Ferrari was desperate to get Redwood to say that the coalition was in trouble, obviously Labour had been on earlier getting their political points in and trying to claim it signalled a general election around the corner but John Redwood was very level headed and simply gave his opinion this seemed to anger Ferrari who on a few occasions talked over him to try and bully (Which if you have ever seen John Redwood being interviewed you should know is nearly impossible.) to say that he felt that the coalition were in severe trouble. Now if you were to ask why he was so aggressive with him when he came on I am sure you would get the usual Press response. “It’s our job to hold them to account!” an interesting concept as surely isn’t the job of the press to actually report the truth? And as Ferrari is now a Talk Show host and not an actual reporter surely isn’t his job to facilitate a public discussion between alternate sides of a debate? Not to try and pick up some useful sound bytes?

This is not an issue unique to talk show hosts however as it would appear that an interviewer who does not attack his interviewee has failed his interview. Now I am not stating that we should return to the times where the interviewer was in awe to the politicians or even to a position where they were not allowed to go in hard when it is necessary, what I am saying is that it should not be the norm. It’s not that politicians need to be given greater respect, but that they should be given the respect everyone of us should be able to expect when being spoken too.

The other issue which the press bring up with our elected officials which has bugged me for a while (And which I may well have ranted about on occasion as well) is the way they attack politicians for changing their minds, the papers are full of stories of U-Turns and Backtracks as if the worse thing a politician can do is change their mind, now it may just be my naivety but personally I would prefer to have an elected representative who is willing to admit that they are wrong and make amendments to their policy than one who sticks blindly to their guns regardless of if the policy turns out to be wrong. This was typified for me in the debate about an Asylum cap before the last election. Cameron was pushed by Brown to give a number for the Asylum cap and when he said that he would have to work the figure out each year he was accused of weak leadership – for not giving an arbitrary figure. This was then repeated in the press so that a policy of having the right cap at the right time and for recognising that the world does not stand still (so what is right for 2010 may not be right for 2025, in fact I would say that it is highly unlikely to be.) was seen, rather than realism and a good policy, to be a lack of policy.