{"id":10735,"date":"2020-04-16T11:10:35","date_gmt":"2020-04-16T11:10:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/?p=10735"},"modified":"2026-04-18T19:34:31","modified_gmt":"2026-04-18T19:34:31","slug":"lockdown-and-the-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/2020\/04\/lockdown-and-the-media\/","title":{"rendered":"Lockdown and the media"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In times of crisis and widespread concern about decision-making, the public is extremely reliant on journalists to put its questions to those in power.<\/strong><\/p>\n

If there was ever a time for the media to act as the fourth estate, holding power to account in the public interest, the coronavirus pandemic is it. Now, more than ever, their role is crucial in ensuring that the public mood is communicated and acted upon.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If prime ministers have traditionally started the working day\u00a0by reading the press<\/a>\u00a0to get a sense of the public mood, now government ministers face (virtually) daily scrutiny from journalists at briefings who are communicating it directly to them.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In the context of daily death tolls and concerns around strategy, there is one issue that is omnipresent across the press, news broadcasts and the briefings. That pressing question is:\u00a0when will the lockdown end<\/a>? Newspaper headlines in the run-up to the Easter weekend, which marked three weeks of lockdown in the UK, showed this pattern intensifying: \u201cMinisters delay lockdown\u201d (Telegraph, April 9, following this headline the previous day: \u201cWho will make the call on lockdown?\u201d). On April 9, the Daily Express and the Daily Mirror led with: \u201cLockdown: no end in sight\u201d, while the Independent bemoaned a \u201clack of lockdown answers\u201d.<\/p>\n

At the daily briefings, there have been similar repeated calls for answers:\u00a0on April 6<\/a>, the BBC\u2019s political editor, Laura Kuenssberg, set out the public\u2019s demands, and on April 8 again referred to the \u201ctrade-off between protecting people\u2019s health and\u00a0protecting people\u2019s jobs\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In response to a fairly nuanced first question on the staggered and safe easing of restrictions, Fiona Bruce, presenter of the BBC\u2019s Question Time,\u00a0summarised<\/a>: \u201cThis is the question everyone wants answering: when might we begin to get out of this?\u201d<\/p>\n

Public sphere<\/h2>\n

Following the briefing on April 8, the presenters of\u00a0BBC Radio 5 Live\u2019s Drive programme<\/a>\u00a0announced they had received \u201ca stack of texts\u201d objecting to the main line of questioning: \u201cAsking for an exit date is like asking Winston Churchill for an exit date in 1939.\u201d Another read: \u201cI don\u2019t want the government to feel they need to end the lockdown prematurely due to the media going on and on about it.\u201d Somebody else texted: \u201cIf I have to stay at home for the next six months I\u2019m honestly not bothered as long as people stop contracting it and dying.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

In other words, the public is overwhelmingly on the side of ensuring safety and listening to the scientists. Drive presenter Tony Livesley defended the journalists: \u201cI think they think they are asking on behalf of the general public.\u201d But, he admitted, there was not a single audience text demanding an exit date.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Before the advent of social media,\u00a0it was often argued<\/a>\u00a0that radio phone-ins were among the few places where the UK had anything resembling a genuine public sphere \u2013 a democratic space for dialogue and deliberation. As 5 Live is driven by listener participation, and has a\u00a0weekly audience of five million<\/a>, this can be viewed as a not insignificant poll. On March 24 \u2013 the day after the lockdown was called \u2013 YouGov reported that\u00a093% of the public supported<\/a>\u00a0the measures.<\/p>\n

Perception gap<\/h2>\n

As a researcher who investigates public openness to policy measures on climate change, this all sounds familiar. We collected focus group data from across the UK to assess the public\u2019s response to a proposed meat tax aimed at reducing UK consumption to drive down greenhouse gas emissions. A key finding of our\u00a0qualitative research<\/a>\u00a0was that the majority of the public is\u00a0willing to accept restrictions<\/a>\u00a0as long as the science is communicated clearly and rooted in questions of the public good.<\/p>\n

Media reports often frame measures such as the meat tax as representative of a\u00a0\u201cnanny state\u201d<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 which implies an overly authoritarian government approach to a particular issue. But our research found that policymakers \u2013 many of whom are influenced by this kind of reporting \u2013 tended to overestimate public resistance to restrictive policies.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The degree to which the government\u2019s message on coronavirus has been communicated effectively and its policy informed by expert advice is open to debate. But, however\u00a0chaotic Whitehall\u2019s communications have been<\/a>, the simple message of \u201cstay at home and save lives\u201d is one which the vast majority of the public recognises and is responding to.<\/p>\n

First published by The Conversation<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

End the lockdown! demands the public Or does it? The media says it does but the author, using original findings, says otherwise…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":320,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[604],"class_list":["post-10735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","tag-covid-19"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/320"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10735"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10735\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18696,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10735\/revisions\/18696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}