Point scoring
Tuesday, May 18, 2021 at 14:05 What’s the point of a pro-smoking (sic) group in 2021?
That's the headline of an article by journalist Ralph Jones.
It's been a long time coming because I was originally interviewed by Ralph in January 2019 when he was working for Vice magazine.
He had been commissioned, he said, to write about the 'smoking lobby' but nothing was ever published, as I explained here.
Eighteen months later – working freelance – Ralph contacted me again to say he had now sold the idea to The Fence, a magazine I had never heard of, and could he interview me again.
To cut a long story short, we met for a second time (in October last year) but after that I heard nothing more.
The Fence obviously passed on it so Ralph has now posted the article on a platform called medium.com where he writes:
Simon Clark vehemently defends people’s right to smoke tobacco. But with the practice in terminal decline, is there any point?
You can read it in full here but it brings to mind something Joe Jackson once said to me.
Despite writing a well-received essay and several articles on smoking and appearing more than once on the Today programme to argue his corner, Joe didn’t enjoy giving interviews on the subject and articles like this are probably one of the reasons why.
Joe felt that much of what he said would be either ignored or edited to the extent that any comments he made would be reduced to soundbites most likely out of context with the broader discussion.
I understood his frustration but he's in a different position to me and is entitled to pick and choose who he speaks to. When it comes to being interviewed beggars like me can't be choosers so I'm rather less discerning than he is!
That said, I'm not complaining. I knew exactly what I was getting into when I agreed to be interviewed by Ralph and I quite enjoyed our chats.
One thing worth noting however is his unquestioning belief in (a) the claim that passive smoking is a serious threat to non-smokers, and (b) the opinion of the World Health Organisation, the British Medical Journal and a former Chief Medical Officer.
I wouldn't like to guess how old Ralph is (early thirties perhaps?) or what his politics are (although reading his tweets Nish Kumar comes to mind!).
I am however constantly amazed that people you might expect to be a bit anti-establishment are actually the least willing to question establishment positions on things like passive smoking, even when the 'facts' can be shown to be false or, at the very least, contentious.
Sadly it's this meek acceptance of what 'experts' and government bodies tell us that is eroding freedom of choice and individual liberty. And the age group most susceptible to junk science and the claims of the establishment is the one that, in a previous era, would have been the most sceptical of authority.
How did that happen?
PS. Ralph was recently a contestant on This Is My House, the Richard Bacon-produced programme I wrote about last month (see 'BBC’s House party brings home the Bacon').
It’s still on iPlayer and Ralph (or Mitch 1) is in episode 4. If you've never seen the programme do watch it. It's a hoot.
Reader Comments (2)
Whenever I read interviews like that I think "Now there's a hack who never had to cover a flower show or school speech day".
I started out on a small town newspaper decades ago, and covered many.
My job was to report only what happened or was said, to double check even the smallest detail, to treat all the subjects of stories equally and respectfully, and never offer my personal opinion.
Certainly, if something contentious was opined or claimed, it was right for me to ask the interviewee how they could be so sure. But it was for the reader alone to decide if that opinion was fair or true.
Many hacks of my generation are saying that post-graduate journalism courses are no substitute for, say, a pensioner fuming because you reported her grandson came third and not second in the sack race, (this actually happened, and an entire village boycotted my paper for a month).
Such courses also exclude those from humble origins who used to get into the profession on the ground floor and work themselves up by sheer talent and determination. The result is a press staffed and read only by a narrow, smug elite, unwilling or unable to ask hard questions.
I really don't know the answer. Some journos say, for example, hyper-local websites could revive the grassroots tradition. Meanwhile, as a fellow hack asked on an NUJ website just today "Where are the publications carrying relevant, balanced, and accurate information for others like me, or indeed most of the public?"
"One thing worth noting however is his unquestioning belief in (a) the claim that passive smoking is a serious threat to non-smokers, and (b) the opinion of the World Health Organisation, the British Medical Journal and a former Chief Medical Officer."
All of them have a vested interest in the latest invention, total belief gives them personal absolution from investigating the subject properly themself.
The Telegraph gives the best explanation of the situation I feel.
Warning: the health police can seriously addle your brain
18 May 2003
"It was a rare good news story in an otherwise grim week. A landmark study into the effects of inhaling other people's smoke revealed that fears that passive smoking kills more than 1,000 a year in the UK alone are unfounded.
After studying the health of tens of thousands of people married to smokers, US researchers found that they face no significant extra risk of lung cancer or heart disease. It may sting your eyes, take your breath away and make your clothes smell, but other people's cigarette smoke will not kill you.
The demise of a supposed major risk to public health might be expected to prompt celebration among medical experts and campaigners. Instead, they scrambled to condemn the study, its authors, its conclusions, and the journal that published them. The reaction came as no surprise to those who have tried to uncover the facts about passive smoking. More than any other health debate, the question of whether smokers kill others as well as themselves is engulfed in a smog of political correctness and dubious science."
"Researchers who dissent from the party line face character assassination and the termination of grants. Those who report their findings are vilified as lackeys of the tobacco industry, and accused of professional misconduct (in 1998, campaigners tried to have this newspaper censured by the Press Complaints Commission for our reports on passive smoking. They failed"
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1430438/Warning-the-health-police-can-seriously-addle-your-brain.html
Worth reading the whole thing.
Nothing has been proved, the opposition has merely been silenced, just not very well.