Ian Allsop auditions for a role at Buzzfeed by listing the sector’s latest woes.
In line with the current trend for brave journalists to uncover badness by these fat-cat-dodgy-no-good-do-gooder-not-for-“profit”-over-hyphenated- organisations, I thought that my youngest, who is eight, had unwittingly come across a big story. He mentioned something he had read at school about Sir Terry Wogan, “who ran a charity and kept all of the money”. I was unsure what he was on about but apparently “Jeremy Clarkson wasn’t happy”. I should add that this happened before the great man died (Wogan not Clarkson), and out of respect I haven’t felt able to follow it up. I will leave that for Newsnight.
When I asked him which newspaper it was in he said: “I can’t remember but it was started in 1924 so is a trusty one.” Oh the sweet innocence of youth.
Shoddy journalism is nothing new (it undoubtedly happened pre-1924), and shows no sign of improving for a number of reasons:
- Anyone with access to the internet can set up a blog and call themselves a hack.
- Online provision of news demands speed, and so accuracy sometimes goes out of the window.
- Fact checking is down by 59 per cent (I think – haven’t actually bothered verifying that).
- Writers turn to cliché like ducks to water.
- Over-reliance on quirky stories about your kids to make a point.
- What some bloke says on Twitter is deemed supporting evidence or a story in itself.
- Lists.
I think this last point is the fault of Buzzfeed (which I initially thought was space nourishment for lunar astronauts), but I can only see five good reasons for using lists, the first of which is that if you can’t decide which of a number of topics you want to focus on in a column, they enable you to do a bit on each of them without having to bother with a common narrative thread. However, if you can’t beat them, list them:
1. Gagging clauses
A new clause, initiated by Matthew Hancock MP, will be inserted into all new and renewed grant agreements to make sure that taxpayer funds are spent on improving people’s lives, rather than lobbying government.
Even if the result of such lobbying is improving people’s lives. This begs the question of whether taxpayer-funded MPs can use government money to lobby government? On an entirely unrelated note, Matthew Hancock has received numerous donations from the chair of the Institute of Economic Affairs, which is the think tank whose report was the stated inspiration for the clause.
2. Kids Company
The grant that keeps on giving (as long as Oliver Letwin says so). I can hardly keep up with this but as a summary, there was a Parliamentary committee report listing an “extraordinary catalogue” of failings – like a bad day at Argos – blaming pretty much everyone except the committee’s chair Bernard Jenkin. There was also an astonishing TV exposé.
Basically, there has been a lot of talking about Kids Company, including pages written about how we should all stop talking about Kids Company as they are a “unique case”. Which is what makes them so damned newsworthy, even if extrapolating that to the whole sector is unhelpful. Oh, and Camila has denied mesmerising the PM to get her way. At least I think she did but I was distracted by her etc etc.
On an entirely unrelated note, Matthew Hancock has been criticised for agreeing a controversial £3m grant to the ailing charity in its death throes.
3. Front-page attacks
Another month, another bunch of newspaper front-page horror shows for charities. Age UK has been attacked for recommending the burning of pensioners to lower energy bills, Friends of the Earth pilloried for being mean to mud and Help for Heroes exposed for hindering good guys and aiding ne’er do wells.
It’s becoming wearisome and there is only so many times sector commentators, analysts, pundits, Matthew Hancock, and half-baked columnists can say “the mainstream media and general public don’t understand you so stand up to them and explain yourselves better”. Because we are clearly not explaining that well enough.
Ian Allsop is a freelance editor and journalist, and regular contributor to Charity Finance
