In the present febrile climate of suicidal terrorism, readers of Ledbury's local newspaper might have missed a heart beat when they read last week's headline: 'So shocked as armed police guard parades'.
 
News that Ledbury's Remembrance ceremony 'may' have been attended by anti-terror police marksmen was direfully received by town mayor, Debbie Baker: 'I can't tell you how shocked I am... The idea of armed police is mind-boggling. It really is, and it shows the times we are in right now.'
 
Not even faraway Ledbury is safe from the shooters and bombers it seems. As shuddering Cllr Bob Barnes noted: 'We could become a soft target, and where the lone wolves are operating we do not know.'
 
If true, this report would indeed be shocking. Except it wasn't. The only shock was that so much could be made of so little. Exchanging newsworthiness for truthfulness, the story had been confected by local journalist Gary Bills-Geddes. To be 100% clear, there have been no armed police on the streets of Ledbury. The story was a fiction.
 
That Andrew Warmington had attended a West Mercia Police seminar on crime priorities began a flight of journalistic fancy which ended with a front page sensation worthy of a right-wing red-top.
 
'During this seminar,' Andrew later explained, 'the Chief Constable listed seven key concerns in crime terms for the region as a whole, giving them in descending order of importance. In fourth place was terrorism and he told the councillors present that armed police had been on guard at Remembrance Day parades at unspecified places in the region. Next thing I know, this is front page news.'
 
Consistent with the Ledbury Reporter's flourishing 'post-truth' credentials, when challenged, Mr Bills-Geddes excused himself airily: 'Cllr Warmington's report was merely the starting point for a series of questions we've been asking West Mercia police all week.'
 
The police are sensibly reluctant to divulge operationally sensitive information but after days of pestering by the Reporter, finally conceded that 'armed officers were available to be deployed to any incidents in the Ledbury area during Armed Forces Day should they have been required.' They were not required. Ergo, there was no deployment of armed police.
 
Mr B-G said this news arrived after the print deadline. But hey! Why spike a good story by waiting for a fact-check? Come on, there are papers to be flogged.

​May or did: Take your pick.
 
Gary is an experienced wordsmith. In his opening paragraph, he made sure to insert that important little caveat word: may.
 
The Daily Express does this when it runs one of its 'snowstorm Armageddon set to batter Britain' stories. 'Forecasters say the UK could be in for the storm of the century'. It's called wriggle-room. When the snowstorm doesn't materialise, those Express hacks can't be accused of exaggeration or distortion. We didn't say it definitely would, just could, runs the well rehearsed script...
 
Deputy editor of the Ledbury Reporter, John Wilson predictably wriggled in his reply to Cllr Warmington's complaint: 'Our report does not say armed police attended parades in Ledbury'. It says they ‘may’ have. If the police tell us categorically that there were no armed police at either Remembrance Day or Armed Forces Day in Ledbury we will publish it.'
 
That, Mr Wilson is never going to happen, as you well know. The police would never be so irresponsible to confirm or deny to would-be attackers any of their anti-terror manouevres, past or future.
 
Mr Wilson claims his readers are not 'dupes'. Quite so: the troubling question is that if it's on the front page with such an emphatic headline, the hushed seriousness of Gary's copy lending dead weight, bolstered with quotes from the Town Council's would-be top brass, and backed up with a portentous reference to 'talks with police chiefs' (another fiction), why wouldn't readers think it was authentic?  If it wasn't true, or in any way doubtful, the question is: why print it at all?
 
Try the 'duck test': if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it's probably a duck.
 
Who cares?
 
2016 will be remembered as the year of Post Truth. In the UK, the Brexit campaign was exposed as lying in its claim that millions of Turkish nationals were about to flood into the UK. It promised a weekly £350 million injection into the NHS if we left the EU.  Who cared that none of this was true, except the bleeding heart 'libtards' and 'bremoaners'? After June 16, the material was simply removed from the official Vote Leave web site, and it ceased to exist. There, nothing to see. Donald Trump repeated the trick before the US election with so many falsities it is difficult to know where to start.
 
The Oxford English Dictionary voted 'post-truth' as its Word of the Year. It is defined as ‘relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief’.
 
Back in the seventies, one of my favourite novelists, Muriel Spark, caught the spirit of the post-truth age even before it existed: 'It's not true', says one of her characters in Not To Disturb, 'but that's not to say it isn't right'.
 
What is truth anyway? When I was young and worked in advertising, I had a cigar-chewing old school boss who told me that 'what people believe is as good as the truth.' He was either a cynic or a genius. Or both.
 
Philosophers discuss the nature of truth a great deal. It's called epistemology. What can we ever know for certain? Is there an objective reality out there? If there is, can we ever know it? In the past, scientists would say yes, there are immutable truths and laws that govern nature; now in the realm of quantum mechanics, even they are not so sure. Social scientists are more troubled still by definitive truth claims.
 
Politicians, ideologues, advertisers and some journalists, have snatched the clothes of such sceptical post-modernist thought and refashioned them as propaganda, spin and political smear. It is how you win elections these days - and sell newspapers. You say what you need to.
 
Perhaps 'post-truth' is just a euphemism for lies. Guardian writer, Jonathan Freedland believes so: 'We’ve been calling this “post-truth politics” but I now worry that the phrase is far too gentle, suggesting society has simply reached some new phase in its development. It lets off the guilty too lightly. What Trump is doing is not “engaging in post-truth politics”. He’s lying. Worse still, Trump and those like him not only lie: they imply that the truth doesn’t matter, showing a blithe indifference to whether what they say is grounded in reality or evidence.'
 
Not everyone believes the bullshit - but enough do to stink up the proverbial army blanket. Social psychologists have found that people believe information, however implausible, which confirms their pre-existing world view. Objective evidence, however compelling, which challenges people's existing beliefs tends to be ignored or distrusted. Such confirmation bias distorts all our thinking.
 
It is hard to change people's minds, once they are made up, especially by appealing to rationality. The key is to tap into emotions. The Vote Remain campaign learned this hard lesson to the cost of the UK economy. Faced with a blizzard of technical analysis warning against Brexit, Michael Gove said: 'I think we've had enough of experts'.
 
Easier by far is to reinforce existing prejudices and cherished totems, to stir up latent feelings of fear, anger and frustration. This is why 'take back control' was such a potent campaign message during the referendum among those who already felt left behind, belittled and disregarded by a perceived 'elite'. Trump said 'Let's make America great again', understanding clearly that a great white lumpenprotelariat was similarly angry and aggrieved. These weren't just clever slogans; they were appeals to profound ideological values.

Muriel Spark again had it just right: '“For those who like that sort of thing," said Miss Brodie in her best Edinburgh voice, "That is the sort of thing they like.”' 

Irresponsible
 
And so to Ledbury and its weapons grade Remembrance parade. Why am I expounding on this story?
 
The subtext of the Reporter's news reports and editorials is worth exploring. Are they genuinely bias-free, impartial and objective in their treatment of local political topics as you might expect from a local weekly? Are 'my group', as John Wilson accuses, 'attacking the Ledbury Reporter on baseless of grounds for [our] own purposes'. Is it paranoia? Or is there something more lurking uneasily beneath the surface narrative?
 
Why did they run this story? The generous explanation would be that there was nothing else splashy enough for the front page.
 
Protestations from John Wilson belie this view however. 'We were not sensationalist,' he said angrily, 'we were not alarmist, we informed Ledbury people about something they should know about, and I don’t give a jot if you don’t like the way we have worded it.' Ouch.
 
The point is, it was deliberately crafted. It was something Ledbury should know about - but what exactly?
 
This armed police story is of a piece with Buntingate, another travesty of politically spun misinformation. It is reaching out to the nationalists and nativists in our community, just like the Daily Mail and Breitbart does. It is carefully calibrated to erode our confidence and create fear of the other. The 'lone wolves' we are talking about are not right-wing fanatics like Anders Breivik or Jo Cox's killer, Thomas Mair, but rather the religious extremists who are poisoning our way of life: the Islamists, Jihadis, Moslems. Perhaps they are refugees as Nigel Farage claims.
 
Was the real intention to remind everyone that nothing in our society - even honouring our war dead - is sacred anymore?  That we abandon our traditional ways and our patriotic, conservative leaders at our peril? That we are under attack from hateful, disruptive forces right here in our midst? I may be wrong, but I catch a whiff of town council politics here.
 
If this were an isolated blemish on an otherwise peerless record of editorial integrity, I might be more charitable. Unfortunately the pattern is clear.
 
In this instance the emotive headline, the quotes sought from the rampant thought leaders of Ledbury's patriotic tendency (but not from Cllr Warmington himself), the weasel words and the mashing up of everything red, white and blue, was cynical, mendacious and socially divisive.

This, along with three other propaganda pieces in this week's Reporter (discussion to follow), are dog whistle political stories, oozing with populist venom and surreptitious intent.
 
There are those like Bob Barnes who might be 'reassured' by - or even thrill to - the idea of a paramilitary police force on the blameless streets of our obscure little town.
 
Less comfortable would be any visiting or local Moslem families who might venture to show their faces at a future Remembrance ceremony in our town. If I were them, I would not dare.

 
News editors around the world are grappling with abuse and trolling in their online comment forums. These discussion threads that sit beneath a news story or opinion piece, have increasingly become places for insulting, threatening and hateful language. So serious has the problem become that some publications have shut down comments altogether.
 
Herefordshire’s local media boss takes a more relaxed view, believing that insulting language is just part of the ‘everyday knockabout’, what you would expect ‘in the pub, on the doorstep, in life.’  Peter John, is the Midlands Regional Editor for Newsquest newspapers. He oversees many local titles such as the Worcester Evening News, the Hereford Times and the Ledbury Reporter/Malvern Gazette.
 
In the wake of Liz Harvey’s sensationalist shaming by the Reporter over ‘bunting-gate’, there was a predictable blowback in social media. Enraged readers vented their feelings on Facebook and newspaper discussion threads, including The Reporter’s. I complained about a comment on their web site as it clearly violated the rules: ‘Who voted for this brain dead unpatriotic woman?’ asked “EddyR”. Newsquest’s terms and conditions say that you must not ‘post anything that is false, abusive or malicious.’
 
I was surprised to get a response from busy Mr John himself. He said: ‘While the comment is harsh, it does not seem to me to be so personally offensive that it goes beyond the bounds of the normal knockabout, hyperbolic statements you would expect in web comments. It also seems to me that the person’s right to free speech to vent their anger trumps a politician’s sensitivities.’
 
We exchanged several emails on the bounds of acceptable language, free speech, and on the destructive impact of spiteful name-calling. I also suggested that news editors should  uphold the same standards of civilised debate within their online comments forums as they do in their reporting and printed letters pages. Mr John eventually lost patience with me or ran out of time, and said he wasn’t going to read my final email. He said I was ranting. Judge for yourself: you can review the exchange here.
 
Midlands Newsquest seems to be running against the tide of informed editorial opinion on this matter. Read The Guardian’s penetrating report: The Dark Side of Guardian Comments and Tariq Moosa’s piece: Comments sections are poison: Handle with care. Martin Belam writes a good piece too in respected online portal, the Media Briefing: It’s tough below the line: the paradox of reader comments
 
Anyone patient enough to let Newsquest’s online news pages load amid the slow avalanche of banner advertising and video content, can read routinely degrading, prejudiced, sometimes hateful comment. Certain news stories are predictably prone: travellers and gypsies, Muslims and mosques, flags and other nationalist paraphernalia. In Newsquest’s Midlands newspaper ‘stable’ (an appropriate term), the brakes are off. It’s ok to call people retards, tell Muslims to get back to North Africa, make references to Zyklon B gas, and say ‘beware of gypsies everyone. they are camped near the Avoncroft museum, so lock it up or loose (sic) it.’ And of course, calling local politicians ‘brain-dead’. Apologies for this language by the way. 
 
So what effect does this brutal and ethically debased environment have? Certainly, intelligent and reasonable voices are often deterred from participating. Comments threads become skewed in favour of right-wing, loutish opinion. Like our friend EddyR, most of these contributors don’t have the courage to post under their real names. In cyber-discussion, the Yahoos are upon us.  
 
There is a more insidious effect. Rude and abusive comments alter people’s perceptions of information itself. Strongly negative online behaviour seems to harmfully distort our reading of otherwise balanced and reasoned editorial material. The downside of a situation or issue is accentuated, perceived risks and damage are heightened, while positive aspects and benefits are attenuated. The researchers who observed this, Anderson, Brossard et al (2013), called it the ‘nasty effect’. One of the study authors Dietram Scheufele said the modern media environment is like "reading the news article in the middle of the town square with people screaming in my ear what I should believe about it". An abusive environment isn’t just unpleasant; it dumbs down debate and actively promotes ignorance.
 
Not just socially pernicious, online abuse is bad for business too. In an article for Journalism.co.uk, Alastair Reid argues that ‘creating a positive environment for community and engagement to flourish gives readers a reason to come back and drives traffic, a factor that the website can use to attract commercial partners.” There is good evidence which suggests that negativity in forums is a turn-off for readers: who wouldn’t be repelled?

"It's not a great advert, if you will, for readers or web users who enjoy participating on other sites if we don't make it as welcoming as possible for them as well," said Laura Oliver, the Guardian’s Community Manager. Why, even the British National Party impose a strict code on commenters: “we have our own brand, our own image” they say. “If your post is not in keeping with our objectives or could damage our image, then your comment will be moderated or rejected.”
 
Derogatory online behaviour is not value-neutral, nor is it conducive to informed public debate. For the first time in history, the nasty minority have a mass-media platform to vent their rage and prejudices. They occupy a disproportionate amount of space. The hate fuelled views of these flotsam and jetsam are not representative of society nor should they have any place in respectable media sources. It is not your right to hurl insults at anyone you think you don't like.
 
Peter John says that such discourse is par for the course, down at the pub or in the street. He is utterly wrong. Unless you are very drunk, politically unhinged or mentally deranged you simply don’t abuse people to their faces the way some of Newsquest’s commenters are allowed to do; that’s unless you are cruising for a punch on the nose. Even if you were, that doesn’t mean that such behaviour is acceptable in a family publication that purports to offer a balanced and responsible news service.
 
If you’ve got something to say, do as the BNP helpfully suggest and don’t make sweeping generalisations but do “offer a well-reasoned critique that helps others understand the problem, together with what you think the answer is.”
 
It comes to something when you have to invoke one of Britain’s most hateful organisations to persuade an experienced news editor to rein in his attack trolls and start behaving himself.
 
He won’t of course. He's old school. Is it any wonder that journalists, along with bankers and politicians are the least trusted professions in Britain?

At the height of the Cold War in 1961, a small group of determined politicians who believed unshakeably in themselves, brought the world to within a twitch of nuclear Armageddon.

On paper it seemed like a good idea. America’s Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba was designed to overthrow Fidel Castro’s Soviet-leaning regime. It was more than a humiliating failure for President Kennedy. Fearing another assault, Castro appealed to the Soviets for defensive support who willingly set up a battery of nuclear missiles just ninety miles from the Florida coast, bringing every US city within striking distance. Thus ensued thirteen unlucky days which nearly ended in World War Three. A deal was struck finally, and Kruschev agreed to remove the missiles in return for the US accepting the existence of communist Cuba and humiliatingly, removing its own nukes from Italy and Turkey.

Who lost most? Answers on a postcard…

The Bay of Pigs fiasco became the focus for a psychological examination of why people continue to do things that are patently wrong-headed, misguided and unwise in the face of overwhelming evidence that they shouldn’t. By insulating itself from criticism and vigorously suppressing any alternative voices, the Kennedy administration had become blind to its own recklessness. Arguably Tony Blair, George Bush and their advisors suffered from the same myopia when they launched the Iraq invasion, another military disaster waiting to happen.

Thinking the Same Way

Irving Janis coined the term ‘Groupthink’ to describe the phenomenon of irrational decision-making among close-knit groups.  What happens is that individuals within the group feel a strong pull to conform, to back each other up, and to avoid outside influences which may challenge their comfortable consensus.

It is cosy being part of a friendly, mutually supportive, stable team in which members are unquestioningly loyal to each other, where there is minimal conflict. While it might feel good for all kinds of psychological reasons, this is not a healthy situation in which to find yourself. There is a tendency to closed-mindedness, to stereotype alternative viewpoints as spiteful, meddlesome and biased, to label dissenters as treacherous trouble-makers or even bullies.  When the group begins to believe unquestioningly in the rectitude of its behaviour and values, when important decisions are waved through without argument, and when alternative viewpoints are greeted with affront and outrage, you know you are in trouble.

Groupthink happens in companies, political parties, in quangos, among military planners and in local councils, just about anywhere where small groups of like-minded individuals are working in a closed environment. It is most likely to occur where these groups inhabit situations where they perceive themselves to be under threat, real or imagined, and so feel insecure and defensive. 

Ledbury Town Council Does It Again

There is more than a touch of groupthink in Ledbury Town Council just now.

At last night’s Finance and General Purposes Committee (23 October), the reaction of two councillors who hold positions of power in the Council was intensely revealing.

In considering some pages of accounts, Cllr Liz Harvey proposed that the format of the information could be improved, that the information was confusing and difficult to interpret, particularly for members of the public. A sensible, diplomatic response might have been to agree to have a look at the matter and explore ways of making improvements if possible. Not a bit of it. Bristling, the chairman, backed up by the Deputy Mayor, waved the comment aside and said that he could see no problem. End of discussion.

Later in the meeting, I raised some concerns about the training budget for Town Council staff. Last year and this, the budget was £2000, about 2.7% of the salary total. It was being proposed that this remain at the same percentage in future years. Not only did the overall figure look to be on the low side (5% of salary would be a rough norm in the wider business world), but given the scale of challenge in coming years with additional responsibilities handed to the Council, and an election in 2015 involving a new intake of councillors, I suggested it would make sense to invest more generously in staff learning and development.

When that suggestion was slapped down, I pointed out, unhelpfully it seems, that there appeared to be a problem in this area given that less than a third (£618, representing 0.9% of salary expenditure) of last year’s training budget had been actually spent, with a similar trend in evidence this year. Why, I asked, were staff not being encouraged to take up training? Why was the training budget so underspent? Was this not a failure of HR management given the centrality of having highly motivated, fully equipped people at the heart of the Town Council?

My comments were fairly pithy, but they were well meaning in that our office staff are the Council’s single greatest asset whom I believe should be fully supported in their professional development. Not managing to spend even a modest training budget such as ours, cannot be counted a success, except that is, if you think training people is a waste of money.

To this, I was told at some length by the Chairman Paul Winter that he took ‘great exception’ to my comments. I should not use words like ‘failure’ and other emotive language, he scolded. I was wrong to suggest that people were not free to take up training opportunities (something I didn’t say nor imply). There were nods of agreement around the table. Hadley is at it again. Causing trouble.  How very dare you! And no thanks, Cllr Winter added, he wouldn’t be requiring my input in helping to undertake a training needs analysis which aligned staff learning with strategic organisational priorities, an area in which I am professionally qualified.  A raw nerve had clearly been accidentally touched.

Bad Vibes

No it’s not pleasant being bombarded with bad vibes, secure in the knowledge that my name is once again confirmed as mud by the ruling elite. I don’t expect colleagues always to agree with me. Over fifty four years, I’ve had my fair share of being attacked by badly-informed and short-sighted people. What I do expect, is at least a semblance of objectivity in the way decisions are made, a willingness to take on board alternative ideas. It’s why I’m involved in this small town politics thing: god knows it takes a lot of valuable time and energy, is emotionally exhausting and perennially frustrating. This is the town I live in and care about. Damn politics and dancing on egg-shells, I want to see right by Ledbury.

Back to groupthink: if Ledbury ever needed a diverse range of new voices to inject some critical thinking, dynamic creativity and strategic acumen into our affairs, it is now.  The town is facing a set of formidable challenges – rampant building development, public service cutbacks, cracks in our community cohesion and an unsustainable local economy.  The last thing we need is a small inner circle of old-hands deciding what’s best, regarding alternative views as politically subversive, listening only to each other, believing completely in their own narrow, entrenched world-view.

Last night’s meeting was a case study in obstinacy, closed-mindedness and overweening control.  There needs to be a change of mindset. 

There will be once again howls of outrage at this piece. You know what? This voice, at least, will not be suppressed. Troublesome I may be, but I won’t be buying into the cosy establishment consensus that has run Ledbury for decades. It's dangerous. Far better to run with that pesky thing called democracy.