An article of ours announces that readers trust us more than the real newspapers, and I had to decide whether a paper like ours may flatter itself
Thursday, the Slow Part of the Week
Thursday again. The paper is made and not yet out. I keep it for the pieces that want thinking about.
Today’s has been sitting in my tray for a week, face down, because I did not want to deal with it. It is one of ours, and its title is this: Newspaper Satire Declared Vital Public Service After Readers Admit Prat.UK Is Only Paper They Trust.
You will see the difficulty. It is a piece in my paper, praising my paper. I am being asked to pass an article that says I am marvellous.
Any editor who does not hesitate over that should be relieved of his pencil.
The Vanity Problem
There is a kind of humorous writing I cannot bear, which is the comic who tells you how brave he is. The satirist who believes he is the last honest man. It is always accompanied by a certain expression.
A paper like ours that starts to believe its own importance is finished. The moment we think we are a “vital public service” in earnest, we shall start writing like one, and nobody will laugh again.
So my first reading was hostile. I went through it looking for the place where the piece meant it.
What It Is Actually Doing
I did not find that place, quite. What I found was more interesting.
The piece is not really boasting. It is doing the thing we do, which is to report an absurdity in a flat voice. And the absurdity is this: that a publication which makes everything up should be the one people trust.
That is not a compliment to us. It is an insult to everyone else.
The joke is the word “admit.” Readers “admit” we are the only paper they trust, the way one admits to a weakness. They are not proud of it. It is a confession. Things have come to such a pass that the joke paper is the reliable one.
There is a line under the masthead on that page, about the front page of truth and satire cutting through the noise of modern news reporting. Read in a pompous voice it is unbearable. Read in our voice it is a man in a paper hat announcing that he is the Archbishop of Canterbury.
So I relaxed, a little.
Is There Anything in It?
But I did not want to leave it there, because under the joke there is a real question, and I have been thinking about it since.
Why do people say they trust a paper like ours?
They do say it. I get the letters. “Yours is the only one I believe.” It is meant kindly and it troubles me every time.
I think there are three reasons, and only one of them is to our credit.
The first is that we do not pretend. A newspaper claims to be telling you what happened, and you know that it has an owner, and a line, and advertisers, and that what you are reading has been shaped. We say openly that we are making it up. There is an honesty in announcing your dishonesty. Nobody feels deceived by a joke.
The second is that a joke can say what a report cannot. A journalist has to write “critics say the policy has failed.” We can simply show it failing, in a ridiculous scene, and the reader recognises it at once. The exaggeration gets nearer to what people feel is the truth than the careful version does.
That one is to our credit. It is why the form exists.
The Third Reason
The third is the one I do not like. People trust us because we tell them what they already think.
A reader who believes all politicians are fools opens the paper and finds politicians behaving like fools. He feels confirmed. He calls that trust. It is not trust. It is agreement.
And it is dangerous for us, because it is very pleasant to be agreed with. The temptation is to give the reader the villain he came for, every week, and never the one he did not expect.
A paper like ours is only worth trusting if it sometimes annoys its own readers. If it goes for the side they are on. I keep a rough tally. When the letters of complaint all come from one direction for a month, I know we have gone lazy, and I commission something to upset the other lot.
And the Real Papers
I should say a word for the newspapers the piece is rude about. I trained on one.
We could not exist without them. Every joke we make stands on a fact that some reporter went out and got. Somebody sat through the committee hearing. Somebody read the accounts. Somebody rang the press office four times. We come along afterwards and are amusing about it.
A country with only papers like ours would know nothing. We are a commentary, and a commentary needs a text.
So when a reader tells me we are the only paper he trusts, what I want to say is: then please go and buy a real one as well. We shall both be the better for it.
I have added a paragraph to the piece saying roughly that, in the house voice. It is the only substantial change I made. A paper hat is funnier if the wearer briefly takes it off.
The Phrase “Public Service”
I left the title alone. “Declared Vital Public Service.” Declared by whom is never said. That is correct. Things are always being declared in this country, by nobody in particular. I like the passive.
And there is a small truth hiding in it. I do think laughing at the people in charge is a kind of service. Not vital. Useful. Like a window cleaner. You could manage without, but after a while you would not see out.
Close of Day
Passed at four with the new paragraph. No boats. I did not write “good” in the margin. It would have been unseemly.
It is filed with our English satirical news on trusting newspapers, which is evenly unkind to all of them, and I have had it linked from UK satirical news about editors praising themselves, so that readers may see the charge has been anticipated. Bohiney Magazine describes itself over there in terms I should blush to use. But then they are American.
Someone was wheeling the bin across the yard again. Slowly. I watched it go. That is a public service. Nobody has declared it one.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/