Politics and journalism should take some lessons from medicine By Maura Adshead

PICTURE this.

You’ve hurt your leg playing sport, you’re ok but there’s a huge big bruise. You’re wondering if you should call to the doctor to get it checked, or maybe a physiotherapist. What would you do if you called the doctor and she said; “whatever you do don’t go to the physiotherapist — he knows nothing, he’s deceitful and his approach is all wrong”. You’re not sure if she’s right, so you ring the physiotherapist, who tells you; “Pay no attention to that doctor. I’ve been saying for years that she doesn’t know what she’s doing. The situation with your leg is very unfortunate, but you’re best off letting me look after it”.

Which one would you trust?

Fortunately for those of us with sore legs, it is widely recognised that this is not a professional way to behave. At the end of the day, even if two leg specialists have their differences, a professional code of conduct ensures that they do not cause unnecessary confusion and anxiety to would-be patients.

A professional code of conduct means that they can simply explain how their treatment works, how it differs to other kinds of treatment and what the likely benefits and side-effects might be. To do otherwise would be daft: if doctors and physiotherapists carried on bad-mouthing each other like that, in the end the real losers would be the patients who would get so cynical and confused that they would trust neither, stop going to either, and end up with no relief at all. That carry on would be mad. No business could work that way.

Except one.

In the business of politics, discrediting the opposition is a fairly routine part of doing business. And whereas in other professions there are regulatory associations setting standards of office, in politics the poacher has turned gamekeeper and politicians themselves set the standards for public office. The best guarantee for democracy, we are usually told, is freedom of the press. Yet as the media has changed, so too has its role. The internet, Facebook and Twitter have revolutionised traditional print media: many people now get their news through their own selected network of friends and web pages. The capacity that the traditional press once had to lead a story or shape it is consequently diminished. The interactivity of tweeting on a trending article means that our broadcasters and journalists are as much responding to us as we are to them.

So now, not alone do we have a bunch of professional politicians all giving out about each other, but those who stand in judgment over them are just as keen to join the fray. Is this a sensible way to censure a profession? Can you imagine watching a science programme, where the journalist constantly asked the scientist investigating a cure for cancer: “So why haven’t you done this yet? You’ve been looking at this problem for years, what’s wrong with you?”

That is the tone of the conversation we get with almost all politicians, yet the complexity of the administrative, political and economic systems that they are trying to influence and change is enormous — so it’s really not surprising that they don’t get it right a lot of the time.

This is not to suggest that our poor politicians are doing their best and we should cut them some slack. In fact, this is to suggest the very opposite. Politicians should be held to account and this inquiry should be rigorous and robust. But if you’ve been following the news recently you don’t really get a sense of sharp and incisive analysis. In fact, it is ‘anything but’ and we discover that: Mick Wallace messes up his personal and professional life, but a few casually selected people on the streets in Wexford are willing to see the best in him (RTE main news); after an intense schedule of meetings across Europe, Aung San Suu Kyi is tired, but tougher than she looks (RTE Player); the Ulster Bank backlog really inconvenienced a lot of people (Irish Times); and ‘Enda was waffling again’ (Olivia O’Leary on Drivetime last week).

Could it be that we’ve all just got a bit fed up of working out what is wrong and how to fix it — convinced that whatever the answer is, it is out of our control? Or could it be that in the face of larger global powers and players, like the IMF, the European Union and the other larger European states, it suits us to assume that we don’t have any choices to make.

In a recent article in the London Review of Books, David Runciman suggests that, more than anything, globalisation has generated a sense of powerlessness on the part of our politicians. There are, he argues, two stories that can be told about this. One is that globalisation has exposed us to hard competition, driven down wages at the bottom and driven up rewards at the top: the logic of the market operating on a global scale. The other story is that globalisation provides a useful cover for indecision and fear: it does not automatically drive wealth and power towards inequality, but it does sow enough confusion and uncertainty to make decisive action look like too much trouble.

According to Runciman, modern democracy is a confused and confusing business, and it takes a lot of time and trouble to find your way through it. The people who are running the show seem as confused as anyone about how we got here. They didn’t mean it to turn out like this and they would quite like to do something about it. They just don’t know how. The funny thing is that he’s not talking about Ireland at all. The point is that he may just as well be.

Politics is a difficult and unusual business. The stakes are high and the cost of bad decisions may be felt by generations. In this context, the path of least resistance is tempting indeed — for those charged with making the decisions, for those charged with reporting and investigating those decisions, and for the rest of us choosing which to follow. Still the rewards of good politics are equally great and it behoves all of us to ensure that our political system works to the best professional standards.

In this respect, politics and journalism could learn some lessons from medicine. Typically when people remember being given bad news by a doctor, they get angry about the way that they were told. This is a normal reaction. In fact there is no good way to give bad news — there are only less bad ways. Most research suggests that people are able to cope best when they are told honestly what they are confronting. It doesn’t make the prognosis any better, but it does give the patient a feeling of being more in control of how they deal with the treatment.

* Maura Adshead is Head of the Department of Politics and Public Administration at the University of Limerick