Advocatus Diaboli: The Nation's Lisa Owen takes on the role of Promoter of the Neoliberal Faith in her interview with Dr Russell Wills, a Promoter of the Cause of ending child poverty in New Zealand.
IT IS VERY DIFFICULT sometimes to identify exactly where a
journalist is coming from. This is especially true of those journalists tasked
with interviewing politicians on radio and television. To elicit information
from the interviewee it is often necessary for the interviewer to adopt an
adversarial – sometimes even a prosecutorial – stance. To become, in effect,
the “Devil’s Advocate”.
The origins of the advocatus
diaboli may be traced back to the Catholic Church of the Renaissance. Known officially as the
“Promoter of the Faith”, this officer’s role was to subject the claims of those
wishing to create a new saint to the closest scrutiny. Acting on behalf of the
Church, his job was to pick holes and expose discrepancies in the prospective
saint’s case, as set forth by the “Promoter of the Cause” – the Devil’s
Advocate’s opposite number.
The metaphor as applied to broadcast journalism is,
therefore, very apt. The latter’s role, like that of the Promoter of the
Faith’s, is to act on behalf of the viewers and listeners by subjecting the
claims of all kinds of causes promoters – most especially politicians – to the
closest scrutiny. Requiring them to demonstrate that their case is a sound one.
For this to happen, however, the interviewer must first
allow the promoter of the cause to state their case. If this is not permitted,
then viewers and listeners will have no clear idea of what the interview is
about. When this occurs what follows is little more than a verbal brawl generating
considerably more heat than light.
Of even less use to viewers and listeners is the interviewer
who plunges into the interview brandishing a whole series of assumptions about
the causes, effects and solutions to the problem under discussion and then
attempts to extract some form of concurrence from the hapless interviewee.
A disturbing example of this interviewing style was evident
in last Saturday’s edition of The Nation
on TV3. The interviewer, Lisa Owen, had been tasked with interviewing the Children’s
Commissioner, Dr Russell Wills, on the subject of child poverty.
Rather than allow Dr Wills to make his case, Ms Owen
proceeded to make her own. The problem, as she saw it, was that New Zealand’s
elderly citizens currently had it too good, and that, in the zero sum game she
clearly assumed social resource allocation to be, the amelioration of child
poverty could only be effected by transferring resources from the old to the
young. Or, to use Ms Owen’s own grim formulation, by the elderly being required
to “take a hit”.
Fortunately, and in spite of Ms Owen’s clear intention of
cornering him into calling for a wholesale shift of resources away from the
very old to the very young, Dr Wills proved sufficiently well-informed,
quick-witted and forthright to seize control of the discussion and make out the
case for additional public spending on behalf of New Zealand’s poorest
children.
And what a bold case it was.
“We need to decide as a society what an adequate standard of
living is for children. Not just to be fed, but to participate, particularly
for our youngest kids because that’s when they’re most vulnerable. So what the
science tells us is it’s about where it was when I was delivering Dad’s scripts
around the poor part of Maraenui, back in the late 80s and 90s. So that’s
roughly half as much again as it is now. So let’s restore it back to where it
was when we were kids. I don’t think that’s unachievable.”
Yes, the Children’s Commissioner was proposing a 50
percent-plus increase in payments for our most deprived children, and proposing
it be paid for by increasing taxes on the wealthy. Or, as Dr Wills explained
it, gesturing to include the clearly sceptical Ms Owen: “People like us.”
What’s more, he challenged the National and Labour parties to reach a consensus
on the elimination of child poverty – just as they had on maintaining the
living standards of the elderly.
Thinking about the interview afterwards I kept coming back
to Ms Owen’s line of questioning. To her strenuous attempts to frame the argument
as one between the needs of the young and the needs of the old. About why she
tried to trap the Children’s Commissioner into becoming the Elderly’s
persecutor?
Ms Owen was someone’s advocate last Saturday – an
unmistakeable “Promoter of the Faith”. The question is: Whose faith? Most
certainly not the faith of Pope Francis who has made himself the advocate for
the world’s poor and the hungry. And not the faith of egalitarian New Zealand
which remembers proudly its world leadership in social welfare provision.
Sadly, the “faith” Ms Owen seemed to be promoting was the
belief system known as Neoliberalism: the reigning religion among those for
whom charity is a zero-sum game.
The Devil’s advocate indeed.
This essay was
originally published in The Press of
Tuesday, 17 June 2014.
