Nolan and the Public Gallows [opinion peice]
How spectacle politics is at the core of Stephen Nolan’s Journalism
As most reading this will probably already know, Stephen Nolan (BBC NI’s top paid employee) recently settled a high-profile libel case in which he was allocated a six-figure settlement. The libel case centred on a twitter account which continually harassed and, according to the defendant’s own words, spread falsehoods about Nolan. Along with the falsehoods spread, the twitter user started a petition to remove Nolan from his show with the petition gaining thousands of signatures. While the trolling on the part of the twitter user was completely unacceptable, the petition he started did show one thing which many will already be familiar with: Nolan is not well liked.
For many, this distaste will most likely stem from a general disagreement with Nolan’s own politics and the stances which appear in most of his shows. However, I feel there is a deeper issue with Nolan’s brand of journalism. That is what this article will attempt to dissect. Unlike the previously mentioned twitter user, this will attempt to be a fair and rational look at some of the real criticisms we can take away from Nolan, his show, and NI political media at large.
-Public Humiliation of politicians over actual consequences
My first main criticism will focus on the Nolan TV show, as that is where the criticism originated, however it has leaked into every part of his journalism. We can call this criticism “the gallows”. While most are acquainted with the idea of the public gallows, I want to take a further dive into its application as a metaphor in this specific situation with the Nolan show effectively acting as gallows for politicians and political actors within NI. The main aim of the activity is to publicly humiliate the political class for their wrongdoings in a public forum, enacting some form of punishment which many feel the political class avoid too often in our system of government.
However, the gallows are a public activity, not merely a form of punishment but also a form of entertainment. The crowd look forward to the gallows and the chance to see those who they disapprove of finally getting their comeuppance. For Nolan, this form of entertainment has proved so successful that it is effectively his bread and butter. It is a self-sustaining cycle of relevance in which Nolan provides fodder to be lambasted, the viewer base are entertained by the politician getting what they deserve and the Nolan show retains its viewership. With Nolan’s high viewership, it effectively becomes a necessity for most politicians to attend so they can enhance their own relevance or answer the questions surrounding their misdeeds.
The question can then be posed: what is the issue with this? The politicians get humiliated, we get entertained, and Nolan gets more attention. My concern stems from two issues. The first (less important) issue is that the humiliation at times is unnecessary and unproductive. Due to it being Nolan’s bread and butter, every misdeed must be treated with the same level of shock and indignation as the last. Every politician’s smallest transgression becomes a stick to beat them over the head with while the crowd watches on with little concern for whether this form of punishment was necessary or if it just felt good to watch. That brings me to my second and more important issue with the show: the lack of consequences for the real misdeeds. With every misdeed being worthy of shock and awe, none of them become surprising, none of them stand out and every politician begins to emanate the same level of dirt with the lack of nuance the gallows provide. The gallows are a universal punishment, maybe some have to deal with being in the gallows for longer than others, but the punishment is effectively the exact same for everyone no matter the misdeed: a verbal sparring session with the show’s host and 15 minutes of infamy. This would be fine if every politician were as dirty as the next but as Sam McBride pointed out in his last article for the News Letter, there are good and honourable politicians in our government right now, same as there are scoundrels sitting beside them. This makes the universality of the punishment an improper method to attack all politicians.
At the same time, the Nolan show has become a relatively easy way to weather the storm for politicians who do things which are actually reprehensible. They can be ensured that after those 15 minutes of criticism the public will soon forget about them and the politician can crawl into a social media-less hole for a week and return after one of their fellow politicians becomes the new target of Nolan led vitriol. Of course, there are exceptions to this rule with the Bobby Storey funeral becoming a months (if not year) long campaign, even though that campaign was mostly pushed by Nolan himself rather than the public. It is in these situations where Nolan presents us with the power he holds. It is fully within his power to pick and choose where the focus remains and how long it will remain on the politician but, unfortunately, the Nolan Show rarely seems to be able to maintain that level of scrutiny on a consistent basis and apply it to the right causes.
-The Spectacle of Gotcha Journalism over meaningful analysis
The gallows are only a smaller part of the wider issue within NI politics which Nolan acts as a cog in. The wider issue being the politics of spectacle over the politics of reality. Rather than focusing on the necessary analysis of politics, Nolan and others have relied on a continuous manufacturing of spectacle to maintain and increase their audience size. Every story they report on must mimic the plot of ‘All the President’s Men’, as the journalist makes every exposé a moment to pull the curtain on Stormont and either presents us with a bumbling unorganised mess or a malicious Machiavellian plot. Nuance and analysis are pushed aside for the sake of gasps.
This approach to journalism has often been met with a similar reaction to the gallows: a five-minute stint of outrage followed by a tacit acceptance of the mess. This, along with a massive amount of incompetence on the part of our politicians, has contributed to a normalisation of ineptitude within our political culture. While the spectacle exposes the lack of integrity and often sheds light on the lack of expertise from many politicians, it also presents a politics where the spectacle becomes the norm. NI politics always feels a day away from its next scandal and its next bout of institutional failures. The response from the public may be momentary outrage but the long-term effect is often lacking in any form of real change or substantial movement to our institutions or our political culture. Instead, we deal with a media that favours the outrage and hard-hitting journalism revolves around being able to generate the most outrage in the shortest amount of time. Nolan has become a master at this. He will often post clickbait-worthy tweets just before he announces his next stunning exposé on NI politics, ready to create the most uproar in his limited amount of screen time and then vanish in place of the next form of entertainment. Because that is what the Nolan show is, just another form of entertainment stuck in between other mediums of entertainment having to compete for airtime and the eyes of the viewers.
Nolan’s spectacle has been a factor in our normalised acceptance of political failures in NI. There are only so many times we can be disappointed before we come to expect failure. It should be noted that the failures are not Nolan’s fault but the form of analysis which he chooses to expose these failures is. Alternatives are not discussed, attention is not retained on the topic for future reform, nor are lessons focused on so that immediate improvements can be made. Is it Nolan’s responsibility to fix the political system? No. But it could be argued that his analysis of every situation he encounters is so surface level and his attention is easily distracted that the misdeeds he exposes merely become a new TV/radio show for us to collectively participate in but not a political event for us to effect in reality.
-Theatre of Politics
One of the best representations of this reality show-eque twist to our politics is the Nolan Radio Show (however, it is also present in his TV show to a lesser degree). Nolan’s Radio show has a cast of rotating characters who appear to dramatically engage in the issue of the day. The general pattern of the chat is predictable: a controversial topic is introduced to a controversial figure and some form of rant/debate/performance ensues, followed by irritated callers who challenge the opinion. It reminded me of an interview I once listened to with Mark Chapman (the presenter of MOTD2 and 5 Live Sport) on the Football Ramble. Chapman, another BBC man like Nolan, commented on the fact that sports shows purposely introduced ill-informed guests and pundits on the show to effectively get a reaction from the audience. That can be forgiven in a sports show, at the end of the day it is a medium focused on mass entertainment and it makes some sense (even if it is frustrating to many sports fans) that ill-informed pundits are regularly introduced into the rotating cast of BBC sports media. This approach is noticeably less forgivable on the most listened to political radio show in the region which discusses topics that are already revolving around a highly tense political climate.
Nolan’s radio show is a full representation of a sports show’s format being applied in the political arena and losing all form of meaningful conversation. Nolan often attempts to play the straight man who interjects reason into the madness that ensues once the callers and pundit begin debating, with each character playing their role to a T. At the very least, the pundit and the caller are usually only playing themselves while Nolan purposefully creates fires which he then feels the need to put out like some pyromaniac with a hero complex. The characters in Nolan’s rotating cast become the people who we base our ideas of our politics upon, the art becomes life in our perception when we are presented with it enough. This would be dangerous in most political environments but to do so in the context of the NI political environment seems morally untenable for any journalist.
· Conclusion
My Conclusion will be short and sweet. Nolan is incentivised to take this approach to his journalism due to our current media landscape but also partially due to the response from the audience. At this point, I don’t view Nolan as much as a journalist as I view him as a provocateur whose goal is to garner the most attention (sometimes to good causes and sometimes to more questionable ventures). In most other forms of entertainment, that behaviour would be annoying but in the context of political media it has a far greater and more dangerous impact. Having said that, Nolan is not the root cause of the problems with our media or our politics, he is simply a cog which works in tandem with both.
