MEDIA INTERVIEWS.
This blog post is examples of ‘serious interviews’ on the media. Interviews with a politician or writer or thinker about some important issues. Whenever I listen to these I pretty much always find that the subject fails to answer the question and the interviewer just lets them do this!
One problem with interviews is that the format is “Q and A” which isn’t exactly the same as a proper interview. In a Q and A the interviewer asks a question and after getting the answer just moves on to the next question. But this isn’t interactive enough to be an interview! Really the interviewer should ask follow-up questions about the subject’s answer. If the subject knows that this won’t happen then they are, in effect, given free rein to say whatever they like. The whole thing is then just the interviewee being invited to deliver a set of mini-lectures in the guise of answers to questions.
Also: interviews with politicians are often just going round in lots of little circles. Of the form: “you and your party said you were going to do X but you didn’t” - “yes we did” - “no you didn’t”. Or “no we didn’t say that” - “yes you did say that”.
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Example 1.
I was listening to an episode of a podcast by Giles Fraser where he is interviewing Roger Scruton. Giles Fraser’s podcast website HERE. Direct link to audio of the particular episode HERE.
An interesting part of the interview was when Fraser asked Scruton a question which I have often wanted to ask Conservatives. The question is along the lines of: why do Conservatives support the free market when this is inimical to things like community and stable order which are things Conservatives are supposed to value highly?
But Scruton gave a long waffly response which didn’t answer the question at all. So then I don’t think the description of the podcast series is very accurate. Giles Fraser starts each episode by saying: “This is the podcast where I am joined by an interesting and well-known guest in an attempt to find out what it is that makes them tick. I’m gonna try and drill down into their core beliefs to understand better who they are and what they’re on about.” But I don’t think he does that at all!
See following transcript and my comments.
[Start time = 29:20]
Giles Fraser.
I share quite a lot of your conservative instincts: being religious, family, place. A lot of those instincts I share. But I see one of the things that destroys that rather than enables it to flourish is a sort of overvaluation of the market. It’s always puzzled me that conservatives are so enthusiastic about the greatest change agent the world has ever know which is capitalism. And how those two things come together.
My comments.
Here, Scruton should have asked Fraser to explain exactly what he means when he says that “overvaluation of the market” destroys. And what exactly it destroys. I think what Giles Fraser means is: “the free market destroys community”. I know he doesn’t use the word ‘community’. And as for how it destroys it, I think he means that market forces throws people out of work and generally makes their financial situation more precarious and uncertain than it needs to be. Whereas community is the opposite of this: community is all about people being able to rely on others with some certainty.
Roger Scruton.
It is a great question, I mean it is the question of our time in many ways. And I think one should take a long view of this. The word ‘capitalism’ came in with Saint-Simon I think. And it was picked up by Marx and made into a kind of. It was sloganised, it was made into a description of a system and the idea is that this is a system which grips people and has a kind of identity of its own. It’s going on churning out its results without any human interference and we need a rival system and so we get the capitalism versus socialism thing which is in itself extremely misleading because capitalism is not a directed system. As Adam Smith wisely said it arises by an invisible hand, it’s a byproduct of our free choices and not itself a thing that’s chosen. Whereas socialism is completely the opposite of that, it’s not a byproduct of free choices it’s something which is itself chosen and then constrains our free choices. Both of them have huge defects. Capitalism has the great advantage that it seems to be constantly generating wealth. Doesn’t distribute it very fairly, that’s entirely true. But it does generate it. Socialism, which is determined to distribute wealth fairly, seems to fail to generate any wealth to distribute in the first place. So there are real problems here as to what position one should take. I am sort of basically persuaded by what has become the norm in western societies, that of course you have to have a free economy because otherwise people have no incentive to produce anything. But the products of that free economy can’t be simply distributed by the people who produce them. We must have other mechanisms for looking after those who don’t, or who are incapable of producing something. Or for some reason are pushed to the margins. Exactly what those processes should be is a real question. I think putting too much emphasis on the redistributive state is dangerous because then the people who are charged with redistributing things, the bureaucrats, they do indeed redistribute things but to themselves on the whole. They create the privileged liberal elite which gets all the rewards. And then that leads to the kind of Brexit situation where the ordinary person finds that indeed everything has been redistributed but he hasn’t got anything. We should work much harder on the spontaneous ways in which people do look after each other. Redistribute their benefits and also live properly in an attitude of generosity. The consumer society attaches people far too strongly to their material products and I think we need to calm down a bit.
[Time = 33:40]
My comments.
Fraser’s question was: why is it that Conservatives are in favour of Capitalism? when this latter destroys things like religion, family and place; all of which are things that Conservatives say they like. But Scruton’s response does not answer this question at all. Instead he just talks about the relative merits of Capitalism and Socialism. Or he is answering the question in an extraordinarily indirect way. So maybe his answer to the question “why are Conservatives in favour of capitalism despite it being so destructive?” is “Because capitalism is better than the alternative which is Socialism which is (unlike capitalism) unproductive and which gives bureaucrats power who then abuse that power.” If that is his answer then why not just say that? Instead of going via Adam Smith and “directed system”.
And if that is his answer then it way too sketchy. So, on the productivity point, he makes very broad statements like: “you have to have a free economy because otherwise people have no incentive to produce anything”. Fraser should have asked him to explain this.
And then Scruton’s says about how redistribution “leads to the kind of Brexit situation”. What has redistribution got to do with Brexit?
And what are these “spontaneous ways in which people do look after each other”?
So (and this is my main point) this podcast absolutely doesn’t “drill down into their core beliefs”. It is happy to accept the sketchy superficial surface. This is just another interview where the (so-called) questions are really just invitations for the interviewee to give a little lecture or sermon on what they think. Which they can do safe in the knowledge that they can say what they like and won’t be challenged on any guff they might come out with.
(Also Scruton’s response is so incredibly longwinded! My heart sank when he said the words: “I think one should take a long view of this” and then embarked on a (completely irrelevant) history lesson.)
I was going to stop my commentary here but then the next bit is interesting too.
Giles Fraser.
Can I give you an example especially as [you have an] interest in housing. You’ve been to my church at the Elephant and Castle. In the Elephant and Castle, it was flattened after the war. And then there were big estates that were put up. That were ugly, brutal, eventually dangerous because people didn’t invest in them. They did have a sense of community about them but they were still tough places to live in. These have now been pulled down. And in their place very expensive tower blocks have been put up that actually local people don’t live in. They are often owned by people living in China or Singapore. And so my parish is full of flats where the lights never go on. For a conservative to talk about community and all those sorts of things I don’t know how I’m the vicar of a community in a place where the lights are never on.
Roger Scruton.
I think the problem that you’ve raised here is not one problem. There has been an irresponsible attitude to ownership which has developed partly as a result of the European Union which does not regard land in any way special. It’s just a capital asset like anything else. So it can be owned by anyone. It can be owned by someone who’s not a citizen of the country and who never visits. And that, I think, is deeply alien to the Conservative world view that the land belongs to the people. The people who’s land it is and this was embodied in the English Law. The land belongs to the sovereign who grants leases on it to his subjects but that has gone largely because of the European Union and it means that anybody can own anything anywhere.
Giles Fraser.
Tell me how it’s gone because of the European Union.
Roger Scruton.
Because of the three freedoms. The freedom of movement of labour, capital and the freedom of assets, land being one of them. These freedoms enable any citizen of the European Union to own a piece of land anywhere in it. But it also has opened the door to people from outside the European Union owning bits and pieces like the Russian mafia owning whole chunks of London.
[Time = 36:48]
My comments.
First of all, it’s amazing that Scruton doesn’t know what the “four freedoms” (not three) are. And then, what he says about how it’s because of the EU that land is a market commodity sounds like the deranged nonsense that callers to LBC often come out with!
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Example 2.
Jeremy Paxman interviewing Tony Blair, May 2002. Video HERE and transcript on BBC website HERE. The following includes text copied from there this website (with some small errors that I have corrected).
Jeremy Paxman:
Is it your religious conviction that makes you tolerant of the idea of faith schools?
Tony Blair:
No, I think there is a strong case for faith schools because I think parents often like to have their children brought up with the certain ethos that they believe in, and I think what people should remember about faith schools, is that we have had faith schools for years in this country, the issue is simply whether we say to the Muslim community, you can have Christian faith schools, you can have Jewish faith schools but you can’t have Muslim faith schools, I don't know how I would explain that to them.
[My comments. This is more an answer to the slightly different question which is: “why are you tolerant of the idea of faith schools?”. And I think it is fair enough for TB to answer this than to answer the actual question to which the answer, as JP must know, is going to obviously be ’no’.) The second part of TB’s answer, about Muslim faith schools, is answering a question that hasn’t been asked yet. The question that JP should have asked.]
Jeremy Paxman:
You don't accept the force of Peter Hain’s point the other day, that that would be likely to encourage what he calls “isolationism” in the Muslim community?
Tony Blair:
No, I think that it is actually better to have communities feeling that they can have faith schools which obviously then abide by the National Curriculum, than having sometimes people on more of an ad hoc basis with particular majorities in particular schools.
[My comments. What TB says doesn’t answer the question about isolationism at all! I’m not even sure that I even understand what he is saying. Especially the last bit (from “than having sometimes”. Also: surely he should have just replied: well faith schools haven’t encouraged isolationism in Christian or Jewish communities, so what makes you think they’re likely to encourage isolationism in the Muslim community.]
Jeremy Paxman:
You would be happy for a child of yours to be taught that was it was literally true that the world was made in six days?
Tony Blair:
I don't think my children are taught that. I'm not sure that any children are.
Jeremy Paxman:
You would be happy for your child to go to a school in which that was imparted as fact?
Tony Blair:
Well, I don't know that it is imparted as fact. Who imparts that as fact?
Jeremy Paxman:
Creationists impart it as fact.
Tony Blair:
If this is to do with the school up in the north-east, I wouldn't believe everything that's said. I think you will find that the school abides by the National Curriculum and teaches children perfectly well. I know there is a lot of criticism of that school, but look at the results. They are pretty good. Most parents would want their children to have results as good as that.
Jeremy Paxman:
Is it appropriate to teach Creationism in a state school?
Tony Blair:
I don't believe that it does in the way you are suggesting. I think it is important... I don't have all the facts at my fingertips in relation to this school, but I know that some of the allegations made were disputed.
Jeremy Paxman:
Is it appropriate, as a matter of principle, that Creationism be taught in schools?
Tony Blair:
But I am not sure that it is and therefore I don't know that it’s a relevant question.
Jeremy Paxman:
With respect, that's not the question.
Tony Blair:
Well, it is, in the sense that there is no point in asking me a completely hypothetical question.
Jeremy Paxman:
Why not.
Tony Blair:
Because I don't think they’re very sensible questions to answer. I think that the issue of faith schools is... To my mind, you’ve got to answer it in two ways - is it right to have any faith schools at all? I personally believe that it is. That it is a right for people if they want to have their children brought up in a certain way, and Catholic or Church of England schools, they have a certain ethos in those schools. That's the first question. But some people say there shouldn't be any faith schools allowed at all. The second question is - if you should have faith schools or if you allow or permit faith schools, is it right to tell the Muslim community that they’re the one community that can't have such schools?
Jeremy Paxman:
If there is a moral element to your philosophy and to your actions in Government, how is it justifiable to make poor people poorer by, as in the case of parents with misbehaving children, taking away child benefit?
[With this question JP moves onto a different subject. He doesn’t pursue his hypothetical question. He has asked a hypothetical question and TB has said: I don’t answer hypothetical questions, and that’s it.]
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Example 3.
Bernard Levin interviewing Friedrich von Hayek, May 1980. Video HERE.
Levin:
Professor Hayek I’m sure you’ll be well aware that to many people in Britain and particularly on the left you are a kind of bogeyman. You are believed to want to throw people out of work, send children down the coal mines again and grind the faces of the poor in general. I don’t suppose you share that view of yourself but would you like to start by telling us how what you obviously regard as a complete misconception of your thought has arisen.
Hayek:
Well naturally I don’t share it but I must say I understand it. If you tell somebody that his past has led him into a morass, to withdraw may be even more painful than to go on the way you are. And I admit I am in fundamental disagreement with the whole tendency policy has taken over the last generation and I believe that the present difficulties are all due to this and that the cure to stop the decline of Britain requires no less than a complete change of course. That means I do not believe as many people would agree that socialism is half right and communism is all wrong and that is my starting point.
[This is not an answer to Levin’s question. Hayek has answered a different question instead. Something like “why won’t the Left agree with you about what you are saying about what we need to do to solve the problem that we are in”. Levin doesn’t say anything about the fact that Hayek has not answered the question but just moves on.]
Levin:
What is the dominant tendency that you speak of that you think has led us into the morass.
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Example 4
This is an account of an interview on the BBC’s Radio Four morning Today programme. There are two interviewees and what happens is that each one just gives their answer to the question and neither addresses at all what the other is saying. Part of the problem here is the format being used. It is where there are two subjects (with opposing viewpoints) being interviewed. The format in this case is always that the interviewees are absolutely not allowed to address each other. Anything they might want to say to the other subject has to be relayed via the interviewer.
Radio Four Today programme at time 08:55 on Monday 22 May 2017.
John Humphrys interviewing two people about student tuition fees in the context of the Labour Party’s promise to abolish them. The two people are Tom Harwood from Durham who was chair of ‘Students for Britain’ which was a Leave group during the EU referendum. And Sorana Vieru who is vice-president for higher education at the National Union of Students. (The transcripts in the following are not always 100% verbatim but they are very close!)
John asks Tom why he is opposed to abolition of fees. He says “it’s only fair that the people who will earn more in life because they’ve gone to university pay for that later in life”.
Then John says to Sorana: “a question of fairness?” which is him inviting her to address the point that Tom has just made. She doesn’t do that but instead says: “Higher education is a public good. It doesn’t just benefits (sic.) users of the system and graduates; it brings tangible benefits to the entire population”.
To which John responds: “You could make the same point about apprenticeships for carpenters and plumbers.” His point being that if Sorana thinks that higher education should be free because it benefits the general population then she should also think that training for education other than higher education should also be free.
Sorana ignores this point and continues with a different argument against students having to pay. An argument about how student debt is bad: “We also have to look at the equalising or inequalising effect that higher education can have and how debt impacts on people disproportionately. We know that black and minority ethnic and working class students see fees not as an investment but as a massive burden of debt.”
Then John (rightly) says: “Can you answer the question about plumbers though. The fact is that plumbers benefit society and nobody pays their fees to train as a plumber.” I don’t know why he makes this point because I’m pretty sure that vocational further eduction of the sort he is referring to is in fact free. I did an internet search on this and it looks a bit complicated but it’s certainly not the case that there is no funding available for vocational further education courses. So Sorana responds to John’s point easily on this basis. She says: “no-one is arguing about taking away from further education to fund higher education.”
So then John says to Tom that it benefits students but it benefits society as well: “you can’t argue against that can you, we have to have people going to university”.
Tom responds “Yeah, and I suppose the real important thing we need to focus on is that there are no barriers. I haven’t had to pay a penny towards any of my fees yet and I won’t until I earn over twenty one thousand pounds. It is in effect a graduate tax and I think that’s a very very fair system but I think the real point that we need to focus on is just how expensive it would be to completely wipe out any kind of tuition fees in this country. Of course in an ideal world I wouldn’t like to have debt when I’m earning quite a lot of money but this is going to cost the country eleven billion pounds. It’s the single biggest spending commitment in the Labour Party manifesto. It’s just a nonsensical idea and we don’t have the money for it.”
This doesn’t address at all Sorana’s point about how the public in general should pay because it benefits them.
The problem is that what John said to Tom wasn’t exactly what Sorana said to John. John says “you can’t argue against that can you, we have to have people going to university” which is isn’t the same as Sorana’s point about education benefiting the public.
Tom does kind of address what John says. In the following way. The last bit of what John said to Tom sounds like he’s saying “we have to have people going to university and so the public should pay for that” but then that sounds like: “if the public (via taxes) won’t pay for it then people won’t go.” And Tom addresses that point by saying: “Yes they will, the loan isn’t a barrier.” But this has still got nothing to do with the idea: the public should contribute to cost of education because they benefit from it.
Then John says to Sorana: “And it does in the end benefit those who are better off because they’re the ones who will get the benefit from it.” This isn’t clear: is it just John saying to her (again) Tom’s point that loans are fair because the students benefit with higher salaries.
In response Sorana says: “And that’s a good thing in a sense higher education’s going to pay for itself more skilled workers means a better economy.” I think this touches on the point that students shouldn’t have to pay for their education as such, they will pay for it by paying higher taxes.
Then John says: “Except that if you’re poor you don’t benefit from the cut because you wouldn’t have had to pay the fees anyway.” I don’t understand this. What “cut” is he referring to? The rest of the interview I didn’t really follow. Even before this I was kind of lost.
In short the whole interview is more or less of the form:
Tom: “It’s fair that students pay for higher education because they the students will benefit.”
John: “What do you say to that Sorana?”
Sorana: “It’s fair that the public pay for higher education because they the public will benefit.”
John: “What do you say to that Tom?”
Tom: “It’s fair that students pay for higher education because they the students will benefit.” (In other words exactly what he said first.)
John: “What do you say to that Sorana?”
Sorana: “It’s fair that the public pay for higher education because they they public will benefit.” (In other words exactly what she said first.)
And so on. At the very most it might go:
Tom: “It’s fair that students pay for higher education because” and then he gives some reason other than that the students will benefit.
All this is pointless because there’s no progression in the dialogue in the sense that each subject addresses directly the points that the other subject is raising. Neither is there any analysis of either subject’s position. By which I mean elaboration of and more detail about their respective positions.