Baby P: The Untold Story

5 years ago I wrote about the Baby P scandal and how it related to Interactive Democracy. Now there's a new TV programme from the BBC, "Baby P: The Untold Story". I found it a depressing insight into British politics, media and culture.
Perhaps the wisest comment in the broadcast was that a series of small mistakes across multiple organisations caused a failure to protect Baby P from his mother and her boyfriend. Yet it also points out that David Cameron misinformed parliament about the age of Baby P's mother. A small mistake. The Sun newspaper misinformed the public about the number of social service's visits. A small mistake. The media reported that a doctor had failed to diagnose a broken back. Probably a small mistake (his back was unlikely to have been broken at the time of the examination according to a pathologist). Ed Balls expected an emergency inspection and report to take just two weeks when normally it would take months. A small mistake. A significant part of a Great Ormond Street report didn't reach inspectors. A deceitful mistake. Ofsted rated Social Services as good and then changed their minds, possibly after political manipulation (the report was edited numerous times by senior management not directly involved in the inspection and in consultation with Ed Ball's office). A worrying mistake. They then destroyed the evidence supporting their own study, as they do as a matter of course. An admin policy mistake. Sharon Shoesmith was unfairly dismissed and was subsequently awarded damages of nearly £680 000. A costly mistake.
According to the programme, since Baby P's death 260 other children have died. 26 of them were known to social services. These aren't mistakes, they are murder or manslaughter.
All mistakes should be corrected if we are to improve and I believe we should have laws against lying in public life. Incorrect statements should be corrected with as much 'volume' as the original error. I wrote about how this could work, here.
(You can read my original Baby P post here.)

Journalism and "The Price of Free"

MoneyWeek magazine summarised Mary Ann Sieghart's article, from The Independent:-
"If you read online without paying, you are 'hastening the demise' of well-informed, independent journalism.Online advertising doesn't cover the costs of a decent newspaper. Journalists are professionals who spend decades building their specialist knowledge and nurturing contacts. Without skilled journalists, 'the people in power would behave a lot worse'. The 'price of free' is that, before long, good journalism may cease to exist."
It seems to me that the interactiveness of new media has the potential to boost sales and create content. We see this in talent shows, reality TV and the comments that follow online articles.
Can we tap into the desire for interactive media in order to deepen the debate? I think we can, by designing a democratic website that promotes rationalism, empiricism and fairness.
The ideas and debates on such an Interactive Democracy site provide free fodder for journalists, everywhere. The debates may be summarised, analysed and commented on, promoting further interaction.
It doesn't eliminate the need for "specialist knowledge and nurturing contacts", nor should it. Neither does it secure a diverse and free media industry, but it does have the potential to give it a boost and to add diversity for the benefit of all.

Lewd Leadership

The phone hacking scandal, a boil that has finally burst, runs the risk of missing a central point about how the media provides leadership for our country and our culture. In the case of News of the World, and several other newspapers, they realise that "sex sells" and celebrity sex sells more. So a good number of their stories "out" the private sexual exploits of the rich and famous, celebrities and politicians. They pander to base human instincts and debase our culture in the process: they provide lewd leadership.
Until now the political powers have been feeble in their response, despite the Human Rights Act, which states:

1. "the right to respect for private ... life"
2. "freedom from ... degrading treatment"
3. "the right to liberty"
4. "freedom of assembly and association"
5. "the right to peaceful enjoyment of your property" (including mobile phones?)
   
6. "the right not to be discriminated against in respect of these rights and freedoms" (celebrities v general public)
   

To increase the quality of the leadership that the media provide I think it is essential that we curtail their power to exploit and manipulate, while strengthening the sector as a whole. After all, investigative journalists do some good stuff, but enquiries are often expensive with uncertain rewards.
One way of limiting lewd leadership would be to use the Human Rights Act, perhaps as a class action. Another is to limit media monopolies.
To strengthen print news (including electronic print) perhaps we should be considering some sort of financial support from our taxes: despite not paying VAT, some papers run at a loss. Perhaps we should also curtail the BBCs involvement in web-print and focus their attentions on iPlayer services instead, so that newspapers can better compete on the Web and Kindle.
(This post from January comments on phone hacking.)

The Quality of the Debate

Perhaps the quality of political decisions is directly proportional to the quality of the preceding debate. If so, how would we ensure the best quality debates? What would be the anatomy of a great debate?

1. Every opinion should be expressed.


2. Ineloquent opinions should be clarified.


3. The premise of every opinion should be sought.


4. Assumptions should be explored.


5. The evidence should be gathered, analysed and ranked for its quality.


6. Statistical analysis should be well founded (e.g. correlations don't always mean cause and effect).


7. New evidence should be gathered and fed into the debate.


8. There must be sufficient time.


9. Verbal opinions should be collated and written down to allow people to review them.


10. The impact and consequence of every suggestion should be analysed.


11. The administration of every suggestion should be considered.


12. The cost of every suggestion, estimated.

The question then becomes how do we conduct such an enormous undertaking on a regular basis? No one could possibly involve themselves in every aspect of every debate! No one could possibly calculate every consequence of every idea.

Interactive Democracy relies on formal debate in Parliament, contributions on the ID web site and many separate debates, each one imperfect, conducted among friends, colleagues, acquaintances and, very importantly, through the media. All opinions are then combined through a ballot.

Truth and Balance in the Media

It is a concern that the media can skew the political debate with dishonest or unbalanced output: Truth and balance are essential ingredients for democracy and are especially important for Interactive Democracy (ID).

The Libel Laws are sometimes employed by individuals against the media, but Truth, in the type of Interactive political debate I am advocating, may have no champion to defend her. I suggest that the law should be tightened in this matter by appointing a Truth Commission, with legal powers, to investigate complaints against the media and politicians.

It is difficult, perhaps impossible, to ensure entirely balanced reporting as media pundits have their own opinions to express and it is impossible to present every shade of opinion in any one output. The wide diversity of media types (Print, TV, Radio, Internet) will help. But it is important to ensure that media power does not lie with a small oligarchy: the Monopolies Commission should always be keeping an eye on the large media companies.

Another way of ensuring balance is for the ID system to list arguments for and against each proposal. These should be generated by MPs and, separately, by the public adding their comments to the site. It would not be difficult to do using tools developed for the Internet. The advantage of this system would be its accessibility on the user interface that is used to cast your vote. It thus supercedes media generated opinion by its immediacy, authority and egalitarianism.

Lies

Free and fair debate is crucial to any type of effective democracy. Lies corrupt the very essence of this ideal and I think we should be considering how to use the law to combat lies in public life.

What is a lie? It is a statement, presented as fact, that is unsupported by evidence.

An un-truth is not a lie if the person communicating it believes it to be true and has evidence which in fact, turns out to be wrong. Plato wrote about this in Theaetetus (360BCE) and it is known to philosophers as the Tripartite Theory of Knowledge.

Could the law be used to punish liers? Or is the scale of the problem just too vast?

I don't think we should be punitive about off the cuff remarks, which, due to the sloppy nature of our spoken language, can cause misrepresentation. But perhaps we should be more demanding of prepared statements made by individuals in positions of authority and by organisations.

It may also be useful to split the issue into three areas:

1. Politicians and public servants
2. The Media
3. The Internet

It seems to me logical that we should be stringent about the truth of statements prepared by politicians and public servants. This would include prepared statements made in the House of Commons or to the media and simple verbal statements of fact (Did you do that? Yes or No.)

We should also be careful about the power of the media to corrupt debate with falsehoods. This does not mean that they will necessarily have to reveal their anonymous sources, who may have a secret truth that it is in the public interest to reveal, but it does mean that they may have to qualify their statements with "According to several sources..."etc.

The Internet is perhaps the thorniest problem because individuals can so easily publish whatever they want and some of the written content may be very conversational in tone. It is also an international media and it may be unclear where an author resides and, therefore, which jurisdiction appertains. However, British organisations and authority figures could easily be held to account for their online communication.

Interestingly, the ease with which the Internet's wide range of sources can be searched is perhaps one of its saving graces, as evidence can be gathered quickly, using a search engine, that proves or disproves suspect statements. And news media organisations, publishing on the Internet, who are threatened by legal proceedings against their dishonest statements, will become more trusted sources of information than"Joe Blogs".

How would such a system work?

Perhaps it requires an "Authority" like the Advertising Standards Agency, who could take note of complaints, decide if a case is to be answered, demand a public apology and a re-statement of the culprits position and, if necessary, prepare a case for the civil courts. I'd hope that few cases were brought, but the deterrent would be strong.

Petition Power through Publicity

Journalists are always looking for stories and editors need copy: How about ranking the "Top 10 Petitions" each week and listing "New Petitions of the Week"?

It seems to me that, unless encoded in the parliamentary process (as with the Scottish Parliament), petitions may be "lost" in the system. However, the media can give them power through publicity, increasing the numbers signing, or inspiring others to create counter-petitions against the proposal. With more names, petitions become more powerful and journalists may question politicians on how they take into account the views expressed therein, further expanding the debate.

A link to News Night from the BBC.

The Entertainment Angle

Votes for the Big Brother tv series indicate the level of public participation in entertainment voting. But it's not just the frivolous that spark the publics willingness to have their say. Question Time and the Jeremy Vine programme are examples of programmes where serious issues are aired in an entertaining way. These programmes, and the media at large, provide the fuel to drive Interactive Voting.


A report from the BBC on voting in TV programmes.