By Laurence Lee, director of media
The drugs row which has been in the news over the last few days has cast an extraordinary light on how we do politics in the UK, and how we do communications.
The reaction from the Government to the views of Professor Nutt and his colleagues has been to treat them as total pariahs, guilty of saying the most unhelpful, if not dangerous, things. Not only that but many opposition politicians have appeared to agree, as have sections of the media; it’s not the job of ‘experts’ to have an opinion of their own, particularly if it runs counter to the way in which we already see things.
Well in that case, my question is – what is the point of appointing them in the first place? As a poacher turned gamekeeper, having moved from journalism to PR, it feels to me as though it looked and sounded very nice for the Government to have a panel of experts on tap who could shore up and support whatever new policy they wanted to promote – it reassures the public that politicians can fall back on ‘experts’ to prove that they’re talking sense. Yet as soon as those ‘experts’ go off message then they become sackable.
PR too has long been known for shoe-horning the facts into a neatly packaged survey or poll to prove a pre-ordained point. But the truth is that very often such ‘surveys’ end up not having the ring of truth about them, and they fall over in a strong breeze because neither journalists nor the court of public opinion is prepared to believe them.
The best journalists know that there is nothing stronger and more powerful than the truth, even if it’s the opposite of what you think you know. It is always refreshing, adds to the sum of human knowledge and ends up making the headlines for the right reasons.
I remember covering a Tory party conference a few years ago and being briefed, late at night, by the then Home Secretary Ann Widdecombe’s people, who said she was going to make a major announcement that anyone guilty of possessing cannabis would be criminalised – ie a large section of the country. The policy was a disaster, and the country has been wrestling for years with what to do about cannabis while we all drink ourselves into a stupor. I’m no advocate of drugs, legal or otherwise, but if we can’t have a debate about what is truly dangerous and what isn’t without putting our scientific experts in the ducking stool then there’s absolutely no point employing them in the first place.
I think that my favourite bit so far is A N Wilson’s article in the Daily Mail which explicitly compares today’s scientists with the Nazis.
I doubt that the former young fogey is aware of this, but this may be the first example of Godwin’s Law (“As [an internet] discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1″) making the leap into traditional media.