POLEMIC: All Birtspeak and no action

Journalistic reform needs more than strong words, argues David Vigar

John Birt, who called last week for a crackdown on arrogant journalists, reminded me of the Prime Minister's recent call for a crackdown on beggars. In both cases one felt that those doing the calling ought to be doing the cracking. Both are empl oyed attaxpayers' expense to solve problems, not merely to point them out.

Thoughtful journalists have always been happy to accept Birt's ideas: the problem is turning ideas into action. But as one who has fought on both sides of the media-politics battle, I detect in Birt's words a worrying failure to appreciate the realities of the trenches.

Almost every journalist is now paid to start on a story by asking not "where's the problem?" but "where's the row?" The story is not whether there should be a single currency, but who's fighting about it; not how to deal with young criminals, but who to attack, blame, and sack for the latest tearaway on a luxury holiday. Birt correctly spots that the objective of journalism has developed from "what's going on?" to "what's going wrong?"

But he fails to see how that change has become the very definition of modern journalism, and thus underestimates the scale of the challenge in addressing his more progressive agenda. It is nigh on impossible for any self-respecting editor to switch resources from covering rows into reflective consideration of what Birt calls "the events and circumstances that will have a lasting impact on our lives."

Last week, for example, the Commons debated the cuts that will affect schools, roads, welfare, housing and the whole range of local government services in two months' time. Yet, although the story was covered fitfully, nowhere was it a lead, because it barely registered on the "row-ometer".

If John Birt is going to change journalism, high-flown admonitions are not enough. He needs to take action in order to progress from asking "what's going wrong?" to "what's to be done?" To do that without losing market share will be tough. It requires brave experiments rather than designer options.

There are some pointers to progress: the best of the phone-ins tend to have a spirit of informed inquiry; some reporting on Newsnight is thought-provoking rather than plain provocative; and Today still finds time to take the long view, as in a recent series on the development of public protest.

Yet we still do not get programmes that start from the premise, "What's the best way to run a railway?" rather than "The Government's privatisation goes off the rails". There should be more unashamedly positive items that look at the most innovative waysof dealing with the most intractable problems - crime, drugs, unemployment.

Why not take issues such as racism, employment or technology, and bring them alive by using unusual presenters? Ask Annie Lennox, Lenny Henry or a jobless student from Barnsley to stand proxy for the viewer instead of the latest Dimbleby-esque specimen.

At the heart of this new agenda would lie an acceptance that the media are in practice a stronger force than politicians, and therefore have an obligation to shape the agenda and create public debate.

A senior BBC political journalist told me recently: "The politicians don't control things any more. We are in charge because we decide what to use." But the prerogative of the powerful - the choice between use and abuse of power - has not changed since Nero. It is largely in John Birt's hands whether the BBC's news is directed to the empowerment of the many, or merely to the embarrassment of the few.

The author has worked as a BBC `Today' programme producer and as press secretary to Paddy Ashdown.