TAKING SIDES
2024 will be the biggest election year in history
Dear readers/community/friends,
Happy New Year. I’d like to start 2024 with both a welcome and an apology. The welcome is to the new subscribers who have found this newsletter after seeing me present on Sky News. What I do here is very different to news anchoring. While I’ll still talk about what I’ve learnt from the daily news agenda, I try to be more thoughtful about the various influences that shape the narrative, especially the impact of language, nationality and culture.
The apology is to all of you for not having written as much here as I would have wanted to in the last weeks of 2023. I’ll admit that stepping back into the 24-hour news cycle during one of the most upsetting and inflammatory conflicts in recent history has sometimes felt overwhelming and emotionally draining. Stories like this one about France suing the EU commission for favouring English speakers in its hiring process are the bread-and-butter of this newsletter and I should have posted about it and much else. But everything seemed frivolous while watching the horrors that have been unfolding on our screens. However, the importance of platforming different voices, nationalities and narratives is important to all stories, especially in a year as crucial as 2024.
So I will make up for the recent radio-silence by starting with a free live Zoom session about the topic I know many of you subscribe for: how to overcome the challenges of being a second-language English speaker, especially if you work as a journalist. Provisional date is February 1st, I’ll send more details soon about web link, how to interact and exact timings (6pm UK most likely). The focus will be around the article below, which was by far this newsletter’s viral moment of 2023.
In the meantime, let’s kick off 2024 with a few New Year thoughts.
Stepping back into news and having to adhere to the rules of due impartiality (see previous newsletter on this topic here) had me thinking a lot about taking sides:
When you shouldn’t, when you must, when it’s unavoidable, when it’s cowardly not to.
Sometimes NOT taking sides is harder: All the work I’ve done around my own family’s fascist history has taught me how difficult it is to criticise something that you love and that you feel is part of you. Taking sides is often also more easily rewarded, both in social media engagement and in the platforming on legacy/traditional media.
I’ve certainly felt some disenchantment with the use of the ‘taking sides’ approach to commentators in the media. You have to be pro or anti, left or right, you have to see the world in black and white. It’s baked into the way we discuss the topics of the day, necessary shorthand to try to make sure all views are represented. It’s better than the alternative but it has its flaws. Often we’re hearing the two sides and not asking people to actively look for the centre ground, the compromise. I’ve done my fair share of commentating in the past and I’ll never forget the words of one UK TV producer who, after a long chat to see if I’d be suitable as a regular guest for his programme, said:
“Barbara, the problem is that some of your views are left wing, some are right wing, some are centrist. Whereas I need to pair you with another commentator from the opposite side and I can’t do that if I can’t predict what you’re going to say.”
“Well, that’s not me” I thought. We may all need and want to take sides occasionally, but searching for the centre ground is what I want my journalism to be about, not predictability.
However taking sides is exactly what 4 billion people in 76 countries - more than half the world’s population - will have to do in 2024. Or at least the ones who have the good fortune to live in countries where elections are free and fair.
Some will vote in general elections, like the UK, India and the US. Other countries, like Brazil and Turkey, will vote in nation-wide local elections. The 27 nations in the European Union will vote for the EU’s next Parliament (I’ll focus on possible gains for the far-right and what it means over the next few months, so watch this space).
More people will vote in 2024 than in any other year in history.
Some of the most populous countries in the world will head for the ballot box, including India, Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Russia and the United States.
While elections in Russia cannot be considered free and fair and the result is a bygone conclusion, even Brazil, India, Indonesia and (crucially) the United States are considered by the Economist Intelligence Unit as “flawed democracies”. That means that while the elections are free and a change in government is possible, the political system in those countries has weaknesses. To see the United States on that list, a country which in many ways symbolises Western democracy and its (often problematic) advancement in the world, is worrying to say the least.
Elections are all about taking sides, especially in countries like the UK and the US, where it’s a binary choice between two main parties, as opposed to one between various smaller political groups who would then govern in coalition. The feeling many voters have of casting their ballot for the ‘least-worst- option” does little to restore the confidence of many in democracy. The (mis)use of social media and of an ever more realistic AI could also disrupt the democratic process.
There is a fear that radical nationalism and populism will increasingly challenge liberal democracy. Though journalists love generalisations (bear with us, we often need to condense big topics into accessible sound bites!) in truth every country going to the polls will have its own political divisions, culture and historical baggage to contend with. But it’s clear that this year of elections could be an inflection point, with the world looking very different in 12 months’ time.
A new year’s resolution? Staying hopeful for a more fair and stable world in 2024. Naive perhaps, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed.
Barbara, I don’t know how districts are drawn for the UK Parliament, and I have NO idea how they’re drawn anywhere else, but in most states of the US, they’re drawn by the state’s legislature. If there is a single party in charge of both houses of the legislature, the governor’s office, and the state’s highest court, there is NOTHING that prevents that party from drawing those districts however they choose. They’ll draw some crazy districts that *absolutely guarantee* their party will be in the majority of that district. Since districts are re-drawn every 10 years, if your party runs the state government in years ending in “0”, you can theoretically run the state in perpetuity. Because no matter how the population of a district might change, you can redraw the district to guarantee you keep the seat. It’s called “gerrymandering” here.
For these “guaranteed” seats, the party’s candidate doesn’t fear a general election at all. He’s safe. However, the party’s candidate for the general election is usually determined by a primary election, run by the individual parties. Whoever wins that election will win the seat. The problem is, primary elections have notoriously low turnout, in the 20% range. In a large primary between 3 or 4 candidates, the winner could get only 30% of that vote. Effectively, a seat in the legislature can be decided by 6% of the electorate. They’re the ones who turn out to vote in the primary.
And it gets worse. The people who vote in the primary are usually the activists - the ones with an axe to grind, or the ones on the fringe of the party. Since the person in the seat only has to win the primary, they tend to cater to these fringe elements. The extremists win the primary, and the election. Elect enough extremists, and there’s no compromise with the other side - compromise angers extremists, who put up a different candidate in the next primary. The system totally breaks down, until you have extremists on one side arguing with extremists on the other, with nobody in the middle to advance compromise.
In a nutshell, that is the state of US democracy right now. The crazies are in charge. That’s how you get a lunatic narcissist like trump elected, who then cannot accept defeat, and his entire party is willing to go along with that.
I enjoy watching UK debate shows, or listening to pundits. But you’re right - there’s no room for anybody in the middle. So politics gets even more polarized.
“Barbara, the problem is that some of your views are left wing, some are right wing, some are centrist. Whereas I need to pair you with another commentator from the opposite side and I can’t do that if I can’t predict what you’re going to say.”
Wow. Just... wow. That actually says a lot about how these discussion shows work. Someone from ‘the left’, someone from ‘the right’, both picked to start a row. Gotta get that social media buzz, I suppose!
It’s why I have very little patience for these shows - I don’t think they provide any useful insight or analysis. Just a load of people shouting at one another. I wonder also, if that’s why a lot of these commentators are starting to say more extreme things, as a way of building/maintaining engagement? I don’t think it’s particularly healthy for discourse, anyway. (And as for these new opinion channels... PLEASE don’t get me started.)
In reality I don’t think many people are exclusively left wing, right wing or centrist, despite what Twitter would have you believe! Dare I say your rejection was a blessing in disguise? After all you’re now doing real news again!