UKC

I came to a realisation, last night.

I've always been a great reader of fiction, including science fiction. The further away from reality it is, the more I appreciate that a good author can tackle conundrums without getting tangled up in real-world biases or triggering the reader by resonating with real-world experience, cultural conceptions or histories that might be unique to their backgrounds.

I have always believed that the real world was more nuanced, less binary, than fiction could ever be. The realisation was that, in fact, this is not the case.

In the real world, wars really are unambiguous. The agressor is actually not in doubt. Corrupt megalomaniacs, politicians and oligarchs are plain-as-day and entirely without guile. Swindlers abound and are not shy nor are their exploitations extenuated. Perverted creeps publish their most damning and predatory lusts with public record. Show-men and agitators preach from pulpits at churches and political rallies, both to the cheers of mobs, with no cause to guard their words lest they be called out as raving lunatics.

Nuance and sly subversion, shades of grey, misguided would-be-heroes, those who do wrong while trying their best to do right and those who are judged harshly only because of their lamentable ineptitude exist only on the page.

In real life, evil endures the light of day. We laud it; we vote for it.

Have you been at the hand sanitizer again ?

Nice one. As far as I can discern you are exalting that Fiction is stranger than Truth. On a macro-scale, on the global stage, you make an indisputable point, Trump was mad, Putin is bad, there exists no nuance. Zoom in to the microcosm of our culture and it blooms with extraordinary characters and stories. On this level, Truth is indeed stranger than Fiction.

Maybe power strips away at the colour from our psyche (or the nuance is lost when warped through the lens of the media?). Possibly the opposite is true and character emerges from within the desperate and the disaffected.

Edit: I went looking for books in charity shops yesterday, I'd pick one up and just know what it was about and how it would effect me. 99% of fiction is cliched tropes, I could probably list real good quality books on one hand

What we read in the papers and watch on the news is merely a fictionalised account of reality, complete with character arc and curated narrative.

Good fiction is grounded in observable fact, mixed up with pure invention and served up for entertainment. Pretty much what most journalists do. It's just that you can squeeze a lot more nuance in a 90,000 word novel than you can in a 900 word newspaper article and news editors are much more invested in which character should be the goody and which should be the baddy.

As old Communists used to say: read the Morning Star for the Party line, but read the FT to know what’s really going on - as the boss class need to know.

More seriously, your post maligns the many excellent journalists who try hard to work out what is going on and communicate it clearly. “They’re all the same” is just cynical corruption that allows liars like Johnson and Putin free reign. Without facts every lie can be presented as truth, and making things better becomes impossible. 

Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely... But nobody can rule without power and no successful nation has yet been built without a ruler (or ruling group).... Quite the quandary isn't it

The powerful will always become corrupt, this is why western democracies have vast systems in place to limit the power of the ruler and the length of their tenure. No system is perfect of course and Trump has shown that the American system was weaker than most people thought, but generally the level of corruption in most EU countries is relatively low in the overall scale of things.

The real problem is the woolly masses that are attracted to strongman type leaders and bah on command. To my mind, one of the major tragedies of our modern times are that people trust a person who is certain and doubt a person who is uncertain when they absolutely should not do that. People who project confidence and certainty attain positions of power based on that rather than qualities like knowledge, ability and critical thinking. Politicians and leader never admit fault, always double down on bad ideas and never brook disagreement because all of us elect only those with a pathological inability to admit to mistakes or engage in introspection.

In short, we are all ****ed because we are human. Go us!

Hmmm, you stick “They’re all the same” in quotation marks as though I'd written it and ignore that I'd actually written "Pretty much what most journalists do." well done, you could work for the press.

Have a look at the circulation figures for red tops vs quality press or talk to any MRT member, emergency services staff or anyone close to a news story and ask them about press distortion and then come back to me and tell me what percentage of working journos you reckon make up "the many excellent journalists who try hard to work out what is going on and communicate it clearly". The reality is that most try to work out what's going on and then craft it to win the tooth and claw battle for most air time/column inches/back slaps from their editor.

Well, that’s your view. I was taking a précis of what you’d written, of course if that’s not right - explain where I’ve got it wrong. 

I’ve worked on both sides of the fence, as a reporter and as a press officer for lots of different organisations including a major emergency service, so I’m very experienced with the range of journalists and the way they work. There are some terrible ones, some slapdash ones, and plenty who put a lot of effort into getting it right. I’ve had journalists misrepresent things and others who’ve a different take on events than I or my employer might have. To some extent that’s just a natural result of trying to put messy reality onto the page - everyone sees things differently. We’re still arguing about why WW1 started, never mind what’s only just happened. Some are of course approaching things from a viewpoint I don’t share. After all that I still reckon many in the quality media are trying hard to get it right. Yes The Sun is an awful rag but it’s not the entirety of the media. 

I think your viewpoint is common but also nihilistic and lazy. Rather than going to the effort of forming a nuanced view it’s falling into the very trap it claims to deride: finding a fictionalised view of reality and ascribing to a narrative.

Thats been the case since 'media' was invented. For just how bad “fictionalised accounts of reality” can get, I'd recommend listening to “The Coming Storm” on BBC Sounds. It looks at the whole Trump, Q Anon, “America is run by blood drinking paedophiles using witchcraft to control how people vote” mess that apparently 15% of the US population totally believe in. 

It's interesting reading the to-and-fro between seankenny and Stichtplate as you're both right in subtle and non-overlapping ways, and it's possible for an outsider to empathise with both arguments without feeling contradiction. How's that for some Real Life Nuance?

Now try writing an account of the discussion that one of the participants, or both, finds acceptable…

I suppose a deeper issue I have about complaints about “the media” lumps together a huge raft of publications and TV programmes that have very little in common.

Indeed. The apparent need for politicians to be instantly omniscient, and have an answer for everything, is thoroughly unreasonable.

What's that, you say? UKC is "Real Life," now?

That's almost as absurd as that other phrase I read on this site, earlier: someone saying "... self-inflating works..." in the context of air-filled mattresses. I call Bollocks to both these sentiments!