Jeremy Bullmore says we shouldn’t worry if people are sceptical about marketing, it’s scepticism about the police that should concern us
You’d expect, wouldn’t you, that any prolonged and evolving drama, starring journalists, lawyers, politicians and policemen, while certainly leaving some of them worse off in the public’s estimation, would surely burnish the reputations of others?
After all, what draws us to drama is white hats and black hats; the knowledge that some will win and some will lose; that good will triumph over evil or vice versa. Yet, astonishingly, the phone-hacking/ News of the World/Murdoch/Cameron/Coulson drama left every single protagonist a loser. It’s like the joke ending of an Elizabethan tragedy: a cast of thousands and every one of them dead on stage.
I haven’t seen any new poll rating for the respective standing of professions involved, but it seems inconceivable that any have prospered. Perhaps their only comfort is that most of them started at such lowly levels that they didn’t have far to fall.
Some years ago, when the Today programme sponsored a poll, the ten least-respected professions were: MPs, estate agents, government ministers, lawyers, journalists, footballers, advertising executives, car dealers, company directors and accountants. Traffic wardens and call-centre staff comfortably trumped them all.
Of all the professions involved in the latest shenanigans, the police have by far the most to lose. Traditionally, the police score well – up there with farmers and doctors and teachers and soldiers and vets. And the reason, I believe, that these occupations share such positive ratings, and what distinguishes them from the lower-scoring professions, is certainly something called Trust: but more helpfully, it’s the lower levels of scepticism with which we believe they can be engaged.
Scepticism is a seriously underrated instinct. Scepticism is not, as many suggest, the halfway stage to cynicism: the two are almost unrelated. Cynics have made up their minds: their minds are closed. Sceptics have open, speculative minds. Just as pain serves to protect us from further injury, scepticism serves to protect us from the consequences of naivety. Scepticism is evidence of both intelligence and experience. Scepticism is informed wariness. Scepticism cultivates discernment. Scepticism does not signify distrust; just the absence of blind trust. Scepticism should be taught in schools.
It is right and proper and deeply beneficial for absolutely everyone that journalists and politicians and marketing executives and estate agents and lawyers and car dealers should be the subject of scepticism. We should all rejoice that that’s the case. Healthy, educated scepticism is cost-free and serves to monitor trading far more effectively than most legislation. Laws quite often inhibit initiative; scepticism allows the competitive trader to trade competitively, to push his luck, to try things out, to test the limits of persuasion. Laws are top-down, indiscriminate and inflexible; scepticism is bottom-up stuff, exercised individually.
The existence of scepticism – necessary, benign scepticism – means that the lowly rated trades, of which marketing is one, are destined to remain lowly rated. Careers advisory departments and status-conscious parents may regret this fact but we shouldn’t. We should all stop wistfully wishing that we attracted the unconditional respect enjoyed by farmers and veterinarians. We never will; and if we ever did, we’d live to regret it.
When people have dealings with bankers or grocers or insurance salesmen, when we buy just about anything including our power and water, we’re doing a deal. We know what’s in it for us; and we know that there’s also something in it for them. We just hope that the deal is a fair deal and we’re watchful to see that it is. Competition helps to keep it that way – and so does scepticism.
We know that people’s motives, more often than not, are not pure but mixed. Plumbers provide an essential service and we’re grateful to them for that. We don’t expect them to replace our thermostat for nothing; we expect them to make a living. But we’re right to remain unconvinced when they tell us that what we really need is a new boiler.
We don’t believe that what motivates the investigative journalist is an undiluted, selfless dedication to the truth. We know that vanity, the pursuit of fame, scoops and sales come into it as well – and that sometimes those pressures may corrupt the outcome. Scepticism doesn’t negate our admiration – but it usefully tempers it. A competitive world without scepticism would be utterly unworkable. Scepticism, painlessly, keeps us all, just, on the right side of the fair deal. We need to learn to love it. To be rated way down on the respectability scale is a very small price to pay for such a bonus.
But now let’s think of those more respected trades: of doctors and nurses and teachers and soldiers. And the police. The reason that we rate them so highly is because we believe that scepticism about them is much less necessary. And so it should be. There’s no social value whatsoever to be gained from popular scepticism centred on the police. Yet through their behaviour, that’s exactly what they’re beginning to make inevitable. We should be a lot more concerned about that than the status of marketing.