A psychiatrist speaks (so listen with your fingers crossed against evil)

I have not been able to summarise much in the way of television coverage of Brexit because it is often hard to demonstrate briefly the play of ideology in it. I am aware I once critcised none other than S Hall, famed media analyst, for ignoring TV news in his (with others)  lauded discussion of the 'moral panic' of mugging in 1970s UK.

However,my attention was drawn to a famous TV debate on the work of the controversialist J. Peterson who has made a name for upholding right-wing opinions and bating liberals with them. The interview in question was the one on Channel 4 with C Newman (mostly on his views on gender) .

I am not taking sides on the specific issues, but the structure of the interview was familiar to anyone watching the BBC interview spokespersons for Brexit (and for Trump, but that is another matter). Of course,everyone accuses the BBC of 'bias', and the BBC often points to rival views of the same programme in its defence,or reverts to its classic policies of 'balance' (also easily criticised though). Brexit coverage is no exception -- I think the coverage follows a Remain agenda, but others argue there are exceptions --  the Express newspaper, which supports Brexit, liked a Newsnight interview and said it was a useful critcal examination of an EU spoksperson's  standard taunt about theUK not having a detailed plan.

What caught my attention with Peterson's reflection on the C4 interview was his attempt to use his experience in clinical psychiatry to discuss the tactics of the interviewer (tactics implies full conscious control though?) in doing things like switching personae from amiable to hostile when the cameras start to roll, setting an agenda by persistently setting up a straw man position for the intereviewee and then interviewing that, playing little games of dominance --and so on. I think Newman clearly shows these tendencies, not least when she attempts to constantly paraphrase what Peterson says in order to make it conform to her straw man which she can then rebuke. I have experienced this myself, of course, having opponents argue that despite what I might have actually said or written, what I REALLY meant was something both nasty and more familiar, There is a lot of other stuff too, ranging from analysing career motives ( C Newman as a social justice warrior out to build a reputation), to applying a Jungian process apparently called 'capturing the animus').

Of course, Peterson is also open to reciprocal objections -- his own careerism, the way he uses clinical psychiatry to show what people REALLY think and so on. He remained cool and courteous, and more open relatively than Newman, but even that could be seen as a power play, not a disinterested pursuit of truth as he claims

If I had more time and interest, it would be worth trying to winnow out any analytical bits from Peterson's performance and 'apply' then to BBC interviews of Brexiteers. This might update my intellectual capital for media analysis,which still relies on the good old 1980s days of the Glasgow University Media Group or the CCCS/OU Popular Culture Group. 

One immediate similarity is the frequent anger (verbal and non-verbal) directed at dissenting interviewees, and open frustration when they do not answer questions which presuppose a straw man, or offer a nice choice between two items on  the interviewer's agenda. There is frequent heckling and shouting down. There is even 'populist ventriloquism' when, in desperation, interviews will insist that theirs are the questions that  'people' are asking, that it is not just them (although sometimes nasty right-wingers have been very effective in arguing back that it is indeed just them, or that they have no way of knowing what 'people' think, stuck in their privileged bubbles)

I don't think this shows that the BBC has some open propagandist interest in promoting Remain, more that the effrontery of any interviewee daring to expose or question locally-supported ideological assumptions is what produces unease followed by anger. This ideological commitment extends to upholding the precious professional ideologies (including 'balance') and is surprisingly easily rattled by any challenges. When it comes to arguments criticising the 'malicious egalitarianism'  of the EC's version of freedom and discrimination, explained so carefully the Full Brexit Staggers piece (see several blogs below), for example, BBC journalists really do not get it -- and their reactions indicate anxiety at being publicly exposed by unfamiliar argument as much as by direct lack of sympathy with the actual sentiments expressed.

It strikes me that the same approach might well be used eventually to account for the similar mixture of panic and hostility that gripped EC spokespersons on realising that Brexit was serious and led to their own sad and familiar repertoire of responses -- Brexit supporters must be ignorant, racist, easily fooled etc.