Journalists

It's an amazing thing but Dr Grumble once wanted to be a journalist. It was when he was about ten years old. Dr Grumble was beginning to read what were then known as broadsheet newspapers. Perhaps that is what they are still known as but mostly they have since shrunk in size . The reason Dr Grumble wanted to be a journalist was that, in the days before the internet could even have been dreamed of, journalists were a source of 'instant' information about the world. Journalists knew everything and then told everybody else. How clever is that? Dr Grumble wanted to be clever. Dr Grumble's father said nothing about his son's aspirations. He did though show a slight look of dismay and he said something about running with hares and hunting with hounds. It is never a good idea to steer your kids away from some silly notion. They might react by digging their heels ill. It's best to let them find out for themselves.

It has taken Dr Grumble a long time to realise just how bad journalists and people in the media whose job it is to inform the public are. Perhaps they are worse than they were. There are more media than there were. Local radio, the internet, uncountable TV channels - these things just did not exist in Grumble's childhood. Many of Grumble's patients work in 'the media'. With advertising money swilling around the way it once was there have been insatiable demands to fill the air waves. And, since big audiences are what the media moguls want, the aim of the content is to meet the lowest common denominator. So, the Grumble children watch the uncouths of this world like Jeremy Clarkson and Jonathan Ross whose childlike repartee makes society think that behaviour two standard deviations from the norm is acceptable. Dr Grumble would be happier if his kids went instead to the pub, had a few beers and made their own coarse entertainment with their mates. But Grumble, as his children freely tell him when he sounds forth on these matters, is an old fart. Perhaps, as they claim, it really doesn't matter.

But there are things in the media that do matter. They are things to do with truth. Curiously the Grumble children have no interest in seeking after truth. The Grumble generation was different. We were marching on the streets to set the world to rights. We saw the world as good and bad. We were, of course, on the side of the good. Now if you look at the major political parties there are no goodies and baddies. Perhaps, especially if you look at the current financial crisis, they are all baddies. Who can be taken in by criticism of Gordon Brown when David Cameron seemed to be shouting encouragement from the wings? And with all this political greyness has come media collusion. Knocking doctors and particularly GPs at the behest of the government has become a media pastime. Health journalism, if you can call it that, has become an exercise in regurgitation of some government press release written with a Flesch score of 100. Why do journalists not realise that they are being used? Why don't they probe a bit deeper and find the real truth? Why do they never probe and read the source documents? It is because they are lazy and they do not do their jobs properly.

What has started Grumble on this tirade? It is the realisation that we just cannot go on letting our media get away with the utter crap they churn out. It's not the puerile Clarksons and the rude Rosses that are of real concern. They might rile the old farts but, on the scale of things, they just do not matter. It's the lack of intelligent criticism of our policy makers and the sloppy reporting of science and, for that matter, most other topics that need any intelligence to make sense of them that matters. Where, for example, were the journalists that criticised our bankers? Where were the journalists that raised concerns about dodgy mortgages? Where were the journalists to inform us on the value of the mutual organisation? Dr Grumble could go on. Of course there were some good souls who did their jobs. But most just churned out what was fed to them in press releases from greedy bankers. We have all played this game with journalists to get them to write what we want. Even Dr Grumble has written press releases. Even Dr Grumble has been on the telly and the radio to lobby for his cause. But his cause was a good one. At heart he wanted to inform patients. His professional organisation who facilitated some of this had no money to make from these initiatives. They just wanted to inform the public - accurately.

And if you really want to know what has angered Dr Grumble you will need to listen to this.

(Not hosted here for legal reasons)


But Dr Grumble's advice is not to bother. It is the most despicable radio programme Dr Grumble has ever heard.