Editor in Mischief

Let’s first take a moment to offer our congratulations to the Right Honourable George Osborne, MP for Tatton, for securing a sixth job in such a competitive market where many struggle to get a foothold and often find them themselves in low-skilled, under-payed jobs.  He’s had a hard time of it!

In May, Osborne will become the editor of The Evening Standard – a London newspaper with a circulation of nearly 1m and a readership of nearly double that.  Adding to his bursting resume which also includes a stint at a US fund management firm where he rakes in £650,000 p.a. for four days work a month.

You can’t help but feel Britain’s meritocracy has gone to the dogs when the City elite - the Ye Olde English Oxbridge grads born into rural affluence - continually monopolise the highest offices of public life.  In fact, we’ve been told he only applied for the job when friends contacted him to ask for advice with their own applications – I suspect these friendships are no longer blossoming!

I realise this post risks turning into a cynical pseudo-Marxist analysis, but the whole thing just stinks.  It’s the exact opposite of what we’re taught (at least in state schools) that getting a job, especially one as prestigious as the position of editor, is based on merit, skills, experience, etc.  I have my Journalism 1a class from first year of uni - quite literally making me more qualified to do this job than Osborne.

I don’t totally discredit Osborne’s competency for this role.  I’m sure he’ll be useful when it comes to the broad strategic direction of the paper and its finances, and I understand there’s different routes into jobs.

But my understanding of the position of editor (maybe this is now old-fashioned) is a job rooted in the fundamentals of journalism – indeed the very highest position in a news outlet.  I would be curious to know if Osborne was familiar with the news writing formula; or if he knows the best sub-editing techniques; or if he knows the essence of a good feature article; or the basic legal dilemmas faced by journalists every day.  How he can call himself an editor without even a basic knowledge of journalism (never mind practical experience) seems hard to believe.  I imagine his role at the Evening Standard will be more ceremonial, giving a seal of approval, deciding the paper’s broad direction – a manager rather than an editor.

Maybe Osborne can find a way to adapt his competencies; but his decision to stay on as an MP is incredible.  Being a member of parliament is more than a full-time job - if you’re an MP who doesn’t understand this then you are a terrible MP.  To some extent, it can be appropriate for an MP to have another job; but George Osborne’s current CV is incredulous.  He is either arrogant to the point of disbelief or totally naïve about what being the editor of a paper with a circulation of 1m will involve: it can be a 100 hour week according to some editors.  His justification for taking the job because he can ‘edit the paper in the morning and vote in the afternoon’ is a naïve attempt to reconcile the impossible and will fail to satisfy a scrupulous, distrusting public.  Maybe he’s on a zero hours contract at The Evening Standard?  Nonetheless, BBC media editor Amol Rajan was the first to break the story and his analysis makes for insightful reading.

And finally, let’s have a superficial take: a prominent governing politician is now in charge of a media outlet whose role is to inform people of the facts and hold the powerful to account when appropriate.  The conflict of interests is astounding; and at a time when public trust in the press and politicians is at an all-time low.

Objectivity is in peril.  How will The Evening Standard cover negative stories about Osborne’s government? How will it cover the Labour London mayor?  What’s in the public interest, and what the people of London need to know about, is now decided by a governing politician whose political success relies on positive publicity - and this agenda is filling the pages of newspaper with a circulation of 1m.  Surely you can see the problem here.

Indeed, many have suggested he has taken the role as a platform for vengeance after Theresa May sacked him.  Others are already calling for Osborne to resign as an MP or for this new appointment to be investigated by parliament because it could breach ministerial code.

The upper echelons of Britain’s media and politics seem to unwittingly find new ways to feed populism like a fat pig.  The manufactured caricature by the right-wing press of educated, reasonably well-off voters concerned with the consequences of decisions based on transient and vacuous populism - the ‘liberal elite’ - has been effective in detracting from the true elite: George Osborne and his ilk.

Too Quick to Judge?

A Manchester judge, sentencing a rapist to six years in prison, has proved controversial when she said the “disinhibited behaviour” of women puts them at risk.  Judge Lindsey Kushner QC gave a measured plea for young women to protect themselves but was nonetheless accused of “victim blaming” by women’s charities, and one police commissioner said her comments could stop rape victims coming forward.  Radio station LBC conducted a poll on Twitter and found, after 1,242 votes, that 61% of people didn’t consider the judge’s comments to be victim-blaming.

Rape is such an uncomfortable topic.  It’s almost impossible to have any sort of opinion on it at all without causing controversy.  There are so many sex-related issues that are taboo in society which is possibly why people are so quick to place blame – talk about anything else apart from what actually happened.   

I feel it may anger some men that this post makes the assumption that all rapists are men and that all victims are women.  I am not ignorant, I know this is not always the case.  But the statistics show that in England and Wales every year 85,000 women are raped and 12,000 men are – this amounts to 11 every hour.

People who play the alcohol/appearance blame game when it comes to rape usually do it in good faith. It feels like an immediate defensive reaction to say women shouldn’t drink so much or be careful about what they wear to avoid unwanted attention – it’s the kind of things parents say because they worry.  Others will think it is more about common sense: when you’re drunk it makes you vulnerable.

The arguments about what women wear somehow contributing to them being raped or sexually assaulted are ludicrous.  This usually amounts to people having differing opinions about contemporary fashion, that’s it; you can’t seriously suggest women plan their outfits knowing it could lead to rape, or that they should start planning them to prevent it.  The idea that a man can be absolved from rape or sexual assault because a woman was dressed in a certain way that made his lust uncontrollable would be laughable if it wasn’t so serious.  A woman could literally streak through any British city street, day or night, naked as the day she was born, and it wouldn’t give anyone any more right to lay a finger on her than if she had clothes on - and in either case it is always no right.

The point about alcohol is more nuanced because excessive drinking isn’t safe and can lead to dangerous situations.  But there are far too many people who take the view that an extremely drunk girl being raped is an inevitability: often sounding like ‘rape is disgusting BUT…’.  Rape is disgusting.  There are no clauses. 

A wider problem is the imbalance that exists between the perception of drunk men and drunk women.  Images of drunk young men tearing up the streets in the early morning are now considered stereotypical, sometimes comedic; but a woman staggering the pavements or passed out in a doorway is utterly shameful and we are all very embarrassed for her.  Some people (idk like Daily Mail readers, old rich snobs…) don’t like women drinking not because it makes them vulnerable to rape, but because they just don’t like women drinking.  A drunk female is just too much anarchy for those with more traditional views on the role of women.  Britain has a precarious love affair with alcohol in general which has consequences for people of both genders.  

If women finally just gave up and restricted their outfits and social lives to what conservative mind-sets deemed appropriate you might be surprised to see that rape still happened.  This is because when someone is raped the person solely responsible is the rapist, and censoring outfits or moderating what women drink is not the solution because women’s clothes and alcohol consumption are not the problem.

What I think is important to remember is that being drunk is not in itself a crime; someone who wears clothes that some (depending entirely upon their own opinions and fashion ideas) might consider to be ‘inappropriate’ is not a criminal. 

Someone proved guilty of rape is always a criminal. 

I understand that to many, comments like Judge Kushner’s are just good advice.  But doesn’t it do more harm than good when alcohol or someone’s outfit is implicated as being partly responsible for their rape or sexual assault?  You might not necessarily be blaming the victim but you are spinning the narrative that the rapist is not solely responsible for the crime they chose to commit and subsequently passing some of the responsibility on to the victim.   People (generally) are not stupid: they don’t go out at night with the intention of being the victim of a horrendous crime.  Judges offering this kind of advice aimed specifically at women, no matter how well meaning, is not constructive in the effort to reduce this crime.  There is a real risk that if women are perceived to be at least partly responsible for being raped because of their drunkenness then people (mainly men) might not understand the seriousness of this crime; there is a real risk it could empower rapists. 

We seem to be ok with women living in fear: censoring their outfits, moderating what they drink, ensuring they’re never alone when out – it certainly concedes that rape is a problem; yet we also seem to be very unhappy about getting to the bottom of why rape really happens and what can be done about it. 

Whether you buy into the idea of victim-blaming or not I think one of its consequences is that rape is diminished to being a women’s fashion issue, or as a smaller problem part of Britain’s unhealthy alcohol culture.  The consequence is that rape victims won’t come forward and will end up living with mental torment.  When half a million adults are sexually assaulted in England and Wales alone each year the immediate questions are why is this happening and what can be done about it? Not what were they wearing and how drunk were they?