A recent report found that the rate of dementia in men of
a susceptible age is less than all the horror stories predicted. A decade ago
we were told of the ticking Alzheimer’s time bomb that would devastate the state
of old age and bring unbearable pressure to the NHS. Not only has that doom
prophecy proven false, the onset of senile dementia is actually 40% lower than expected.
Perhaps the wisest thing Nostradamus ever did was set his vague predictions in
the distant future where the gullible of a certain bent could, by squinting and
being selective with interpretation, fit a prophecy to an event.
How is it, people will ask, that the very best medical
soothsayers were so wildly incorrect in a forecast that has been used to plan
expensive intervention with public funds? How indeed. This is, of course, a perfectly
regular phenomenon and relies for its efficacy on the general tendency not to
worry too much about the truth; better yet to just let such sleeping dog predictions lie. We
are, of course, still awaiting our colonies on the moon and the cure for cancer
but most of the output of futuristic think tank thought is long forgotten.
But there is another option; fit the current ‘facts’ to
the retrospectively adjusted past. They say the victor rewrites history to suit
the narrative and this has been happening for years, but why be so blunt when instead
we can use the current news to drive change? We can fit the future to the
present, rather than fixing the past. Veteran reporter Martyn Lewis said recently
that negative news is disempowering. We don’t want to hear bad news - it makes
us ill – so we should instead be focusing on what has been called ‘solution
journalism’. (Or, for Labour perhaps, 'final solution' journalism.)
Events, he suggests, should be reported more positively
and constructively and instead of just laying bare the facts as they are known,
journalists could offer helpful solutions to the misery inducing problems those
tricky facts bring. So, hey, a tsunami may have just swept away hundreds of
homes on a Haitian shoreline but on the positive side, watch out for some
fabulous opportunities to buy seafront real estate at garage sale prices! Or,
the economy is tanking but at least this should deter the number of immigrants
who want to come to Britain... eventually. And the trains will only ever be
late because of the right kind of leaves on the track.
As a commentator observed, this approach risks journalism
veering perilously closely to becoming PR, media spin for the promulgation of
centrally approved stories. In 1984 the chocolate ration is ‘increased’ by the ingenious
device of altering last year’s chocolate ration figure to around half of today’s
and presenting a decline as a doubling. Last year’s terrorists become this year’s
freedom fighters and grubby events of the past are given a thorough hosing down
and sanitised for current consumption.
There are no problems, only opportunities. You may be out
of work but the jobless figures could be presented as a count of the growing number
of optimists out to realise their true potential. Kids may no longer be able to
read and add up but this is a good thing, preventing them from ever discovering
the joylessness of critical thought. And now that Hillsborough has been disinfected and all traces of unpleasantness expunged we can see that everything we
ever believed about the football supporters of the eighties was wrong. They
were all blameless angels and you are a hater for thinking otherwise.
The next twenty years' headlines
Yes, the news of the future will only ever be spotless,
scrubbed clean news. No more death or war or famine, just endless shining solutions
for a brighter tomorrow. Dour, negative reporting of disasters will be
consigned to the dustbin of history – and not any old rusty, fat-streaked
galvanised dustbin hiding dirty secrets and surrounded by wasps, but the
Brillo-pad scoured, gleaming wheelie bin of joyful past carnivals. They must think
we are all going senile.
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