The So-Called "News"

Before he re-branded himself as an intellectual, Jeremy Paxman made his name by being a sneering, superannuated schoolboy who met every ministerial claim with the same drawling incredulity. No stretch of the imagination was needed to see him squeezed into an inky desk at the age of 14, scowling at the stupidity of his masters. It was all highly entertaining.

The BBC has now become so Paxmanised that no Newsnight anchor is complete without a full arsenal of withering ticks and belligerent interruptions, but recent events have revealed that this tendency has even spread to the early evening news. Reference has been heard, on several occasions, to the "so-called "Real" I.R.A."

Now I don't recollect the Beeb dubbing the unlamented forbears of this newly active organisation "the I.R. so-called "A"". The Tamil so-called "Tigers" have been little in evidence, while so-called "Islamic" fundamentalists of many an extremist hue have been allowed to pass unchallenged. Was there some concern on the part of the B.B.C. that confusion might arise in its viewers minds between the original-and-still-the-best I.R.A. and a bunch of people who like to murder policemen and soldiers? There was a notable shortage of men in black balaclavas threatening legal action for copyright infringement, but so timid have the Board of Governors become that even the thought of it possibly had them running for cover. When an organisation can be brought to its knees by the process of naming a pet cat, its days as a crusader for truth are long gone.

One would have thought, however, that of all brandings to respect, the I.R.A has the least currency. What with its swords having been beaten into ploughshares, what used to be an army has surely a more agricultural inclination these days ... it is more of a Provisional Irish Republican Land Army. This means that the name is up for grabs, and (in the brief period before they are all locked up or violently disposed of) the Real I.R.A. may as well make merry with it. It is not as though they called themselves the Real Irish Catholic Church.

Moreover, why so-called? Just think of the Gallic panache that could be lent to this organisation had the B.B.C. chosen to dub it "the soi-disant Real I.R.A.". The self-proclaimed I.R.A. would have resounded with authority and vigor, whereas by terming them "the so-called Real I.R.A." BBC correspondents merely make themselves sound more surly and sarcastic than usual. One imagines that they add a mental snigger to the end of every sentence in which they use the phrase so-called.

Given, however, that the B.B.C. has decided to editorialise, one watches the evening news with renewed hope that its new-found cynicism will be turned on other subjects in the world of current affairs. How long will it be before Nick Clegg is introduced as the "so-called "leader" of the Liberal Democrats" or Jack Straw referred to as "the secretary of State for so-called "Justice""?

Bearing in mind how little real news there is on the so-called news, though, news editors might think better of building their pile of stones so close to their own glass house.