Contemporary Authors

• Enough Said: What's Gone Wrong with the Language of Politics? St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 2016

1. Enough said : what's gone wrong with the language of politics? LCCN 2016497273 Type of material Book Personal name Thompson, Mark John, 1957- author. Main title Enough said : what's gone wrong with the language of politics? / Mark Thompson. Published/Produced London : The Bodley Head, 2016. ©2016. Description 375 pages ; 25 cm ISBN 9781847923127 (hardback) 1847923127 (hardback) CALL NUMBER P119.3 .T48 2016b CABIN BRANCH Copy 1 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms - STORED OFFSITE 2. Enough said : what's gone wrong with the language of politics? LCCN 2016018421 Type of material Book Personal name Thompson, Mark John, 1957- author. Main title Enough said : what's gone wrong with the language of politics? / Mark Thompson. Edition First edition. Published/Produced New York : St. Martin's Press, 2016. Description 342 pages ; 25 cm ISBN 9781250059574 (hardcover) CALL NUMBER P119.3 .T48 2016 Copy 1 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms

• NY Times Company - http://www.nytco.com/executives/mark-thompson/

  Mark Thompson
  President & Chief Executive Officer,
  The New York Times Company
  Mark Thompson became president and chief executive officer of The New York Times Company on November 12, 2012. He is responsible for leading the Company’s strategy, operations and business units, and working closely with the chairman to direct the vision of the company.

  Mr. Thompson has been instrumental in accelerating the pace of The Times’s digital transformation. Under his leadership, The Times became the first news organization in the world to pass the one million digital-only subscription mark. The company has also introduced a new era of international growth, launched an industry leading branded content studio and invested in virtual reality, producing some of the most celebrated work in this emerging medium.

  Before joining the Times Company, Mr. Thompson served as Director-General of the BBC from 2004, where he reshaped the organization to meet the challenge of the digital age, ensuring that it remained a leading innovator with the launch of services such as the BBC iPlayer. He also oversaw a transformation of the BBC itself, driving productivity and efficiency through the introduction of new technologies and bold organizational redesign.

  Mr. Thompson joined the BBC in 1979 as a production trainee. He helped launch Watchdog and Breakfast Time, was an output editor on Newsnight, and was appointed editor of the Nine O’Clock News in 1988 and of Panorama in 1990. He became controller (programming and scheduling chief) for the TV network BBC2 and Director of Television for the BBC before leaving the BBC in 2002 to become CEO of Channel 4 Television Corporation in the United Kingdom.

  In the autumn of 2012, he was a visiting professor of Rhetoric and the Art of Public Persuasion at the University of Oxford. His book “Enough Said: What’s Gone Wrong with the Language of Politics?” which is based on the lectures he gave at Oxford, was published in the UK and US in September 2016.

  Mark Thompson was educated at Stonyhurst College and Merton College, Oxford.

• Good Reads - http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/15300136.Mark_John_Thompson

  MARK THOMPSON has been the President and CEO of The New York Times Company since 2012. Previously, he was Director-General of the BBC from 2004-2012, and CEO of Channel 4 Television Corporation from 2002-2004. Born in London, Thompson attended Stonyhurst College and Merton College Oxford. Thompson has three children with his wife, writer Jane Blumberg.

• wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Thompson_(media_executive)

  Mark John Thompson[1] (born 31 July 1957)[2] is the current Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of The New York Times Company.

  From 2004 to 2012, Thompson was Director-General of the BBC, and was a former Chief Executive of Channel 4.

  Contents [hide]
  1 Early life
  2 BBC
  2.1 Appointment as Director-General
  2.2 Editorial guideline breaches
  2.3 Controversy
  2.3.1 Programme production
  2.3.2 Jerry Springer: The Opera
  2.3.3 Accusations of pro-Israeli editorial stance
  2.3.4 Nick Griffin
  2.3.5 Formula One broadcast rights
  2.3.6 Earnings
  2.3.7 Criticism by Robert Winston
  2.3.8 Jimmy Savile sexual abuse scandal
  3 The New York Times Company
  4 Books
  5 Ranking
  6 Broadcasting career
  7 Personal life
  8 References
  9 External links
  Early life[edit]
  Thompson was born in London, England, and brought up in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire,[3] by his mother, Sydney Corduff, his sister, Katherine, and father, Duncan John Thompson. Thompson was educated by Jesuits at the independent school, Stonyhurst College, and then went up to Merton College, Oxford, where he took a first in English.[2] Thompson edited the university magazine, Isis.[4]

  BBC[edit]
  Appointment as Director-General[edit]

  Thompson in April 2005.
  Thompson was appointed Director-General on 21 May 2004.[5] He succeeded Greg Dyke, who resigned on 29 January 2004 in the aftermath of the Hutton Inquiry. Although he had originally stated he was not interested in the role of Director-General and would turn down any approach from the BBC, he changed his mind, saying the job was a "one-of-a-kind opportunity". The decision to appoint Thompson Director-General was made unanimously by the BBC Board of Governors, headed by the then new Chairman Michael Grade (another former chief executive of Channel 4). His appointment was widely praised: Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell, Shadow Culture Secretary Julie Kirkbride and Greg Dyke were amongst those who supported his selection. He took up the role of Director-General on 22 June 2004[5] (Mark Byford had been Acting Director-General since Dyke's resignation). On his first day he announced several management changes, including the replacement of the BBC's sixteen-person executive committee with a slimmed-down executive board of nine top managers.

  Editorial guideline breaches[edit]
  In 2007 it emerged that the BBC had been involved in a number of editorial guideline breaches. Mark Thompson, as BBC editor-in-chief investigated these breaches, and presented his interim report to the BBC Trust on 18 July 2007.[6] The Trust felt that the BBC’s values of accuracy and honesty had been compromised, and Thompson outlined to the Trust the actions he would take to restore confidence.

  Later that day he told BBC staff, via an internal televised message,[7] that deception of the public was never acceptable. He said that he, himself, had never deceived the public – it would never have occurred to him to do so, and that he was sure that the same applied to the "overwhelming majority" of BBC staff. He also spoke on BBC News 24[8] and was interviewed by Gavin Esler for Newsnight. He stated that "from now on, if it [deceiving the public] happens we will show people the door."[9] Staff were emailed on 19 July 2007[10] and later in the year all staff, including the Director-General, undertook a Safeguarding Trust course.[11]

  In October 2008, Thompson had to cut short a family holiday to return to Britain to deal with The Russell Brand Show prank telephone calls row. Thompson took the executive decision to suspend the BBC’s highest paid presenter, Jonathan Ross, from all his BBC work for three months without pay. He also said it was the controversial star's last warning.[12] Nevertheless, Thompson reiterated the BBC's commitment to Ross's style of edgy comedy, claiming that "BBC audiences accept that, in comedy, performers attempt to push the line of taste".[13] Thompson had previously defended the star’s conduct and salary in 2006, when he described Ross as “outstanding” and claimed that "the very best people" deserved appropriately high salaries.[14]

  In September 2010 Thompson acknowledged some of the BBC's previous political bias he had witnessed early in his career. He stated: "In the BBC I joined 30 years ago there was, in much of current affairs, in terms of people's personal politics, which were quite vocal, a massive bias to the left". He added: "the organisation did struggle then with impartiality",[15] though also suggested that there was now "much less overt tribalism".[16]

  In 2010, Thompson was identified as the highest paid employee of any public sector organisation in the UK, earning between £800,000 and £900,000 per year.[17]

  Controversy[edit]
  Unbalanced scales.svg
  This article's Criticism or Controversy section may compromise the article's neutral point of view of the subject. Please integrate the section's contents into the article as a whole, or rewrite the material. (August 2012)
  Programme production[edit]
  In late 2007, Thompson's directorship at the BBC was criticised. Sir Richard Eyre, former artistic director of the National Theatre, accused the BBC under Thompson's leadership of failing to produce programmes "that inspired viewers to visit galleries, museums or theatres".[18] He was also criticised by Tony Palmer, a multi-award-winning filmmaker. Of the BBC, Palmer stated that it "has a worldwide reputation which it has abrogated and that's shameful. In the end, the buck stops with Mark Thompson. He is a catastrophe."[19]

  Jerry Springer: The Opera[edit]
  He was criticised by religious groups in relation to the broadcast of Jerry Springer: The Opera, with a private prosecution brought against the BBC for blasphemy. David Pannick QC appeared and won the case. The High Court ruled that the cult musical was not blasphemous, and Pannick stated that Judge Tubbs had "acted within her powers and made the only decision she could lawfully have made; while religious beliefs were integral to British society, so is freedom of expression, especially to matters of social and moral importance."[20]

  Accusations of pro-Israeli editorial stance[edit]
  A number of commentators have suggested that Thompson has a pro-Israeli editorial stance, particularly since he supported the controversial decision by the BBC not to broadcast the DEC Gaza appeal in January 2009.[21] Complaints to the BBC about the decision, numbering nearly 16,000, were directed to a statement by Thompson.[22] In May 2011, Thompson ordered the lyrics 'free Palestine' in a rap on BBC 1 Extra to be censored.[23] During a meeting of the British Parliament's Culture and Media Committee in June 2012, Thompson also issued an apology for not devoting more coverage to the murders of an Israeli settler family in the West Bank, saying the "network got it wrong" – despite the fact that the incident occurred on the same day as the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami.[24]

  Tam Dean Burn wrote in The Herald: "I would argue that this bias has moved on apace since Thompson went to Israel in 2005 and signed a deal with prime minister Ariel Sharon on the BBC's coverage of the conflict."[25]

  Nick Griffin[edit]
  In October 2009, Thompson defended the decision by the BBC to invite British National Party leader Nick Griffin to appear on the Question Time programme following criticism by Labour politicians including Home Secretary Alan Johnson and Secretary of State for Wales Peter Hain. The decision also led to protests outside BBC Television Centre by UAF campaigners. Thompson said: "It is a straightforward matter of fact that … the BNP has demonstrated a level of support which would normally lead to an occasional invitation to join the panel on Question Time. It is for that reason alone … that the invitation has been extended. The case against inviting the BNP to appear on Question Time is a case for censorship … Democratic societies sometimes do decide that some parties and organisations are beyond the pale. As a result they proscribe them and/or ban them from the airwaves. My point is simply that the drastic steps of proscription and censorship can only be taken by government and parliament … It is unreasonable and inconsistent to take the position that a party like the BNP is acceptable enough for the public to vote for, but not acceptable enough to appear on democratic platforms like Question Time. If there is a case for censorship, it should be debated and decided in parliament. Political censorship cannot be outsourced to the BBC or anyone else."[26]

  Formula One broadcast rights[edit]

  Thompson in 2013
  Thompson was Director General of the BBC when on 29 July 2011 it was announced that the Corporation would no longer televise all Formula One Grand Prix live, instead agreeing to split the broadcast between the BBC and Sky Sports. This prompted an outcry from several thousand fans and a motion on the UK Government e-petition site. On 2 September 2011, Thompson and several "senior BBC figures" were called upon by the House of Commons to answer questions over the exact nature of the broadcast arrangement.[27]

  Earnings[edit]
  In January 2010, Thompson was criticised over his £834,000 salary. The BBC presenter Stephen Sackur told him "there are huge numbers of people in the organisation who think your salary is plain wrong and corrosive."[28]

  Criticism by Robert Winston[edit]
  In October 2012, the fertility expert Robert Winston, who presented the BAFTA award-winning series The Human Body, said: "I don't think Mark Thompson has led well from the top. It's not just my perception. Many of the scientific community feel very, very uneasy, and the news people clearly do." Winston had previously accused Mark Thompson of "cowardice" and a lack of "spine" in its leadership, over a controversial trailer which included misleading footage of the Queen.[29]

  Jimmy Savile sexual abuse scandal[edit]
  Though Thompson departed the BBC before public exposure of the Savile scandal and is not noted in the BBC chronology of the unfolding coverage,[30] Thompson faced questions about his role in the events around Savile's actions and BBC coverage of them. Per a New York Times review, Thompson has denied knowing of a BBC Newsnight program on accusations against Sir Jimmy Savile before the program was dropped soon after Savile's death in October, 2011.[31]

  The New York Times Company[edit]
  On 14 August 2012, he was named CEO of The New York Times Company, effective November 2012.[32]

  Books[edit]
  In 2016, Thompson published Enough Said: What's Gone Wrong with the Language of Politics? Thompson condemns political discourse that is "just a fight to the political death, a fight in which every linguistic weapon is fair game" and is critical of the rejection of science and expertise, writing that this has disastrous policymaking consequences.[33] Thompson also criticized false balance in news reporting.[33] The book was favorably reviewed by Andrew Rawnsley, who called an "important study" that "identifies many culprits for the destructiveness of political debate."[33] John Lloyd, writing in the Financial Times, praised the work as reflective and an "intricately but also urgently argued book." [34]

  Ranking[edit]
  In 2009 Thompson was ranked as the 65th most powerful person in the world by Forbes magazine.[35]

  Broadcasting career[edit]
  He first joined the BBC as a production trainee in 1979. His subsequent career within the organisation has been varied, including:

  1981 – assisted launching long-running consumer programme Watchdog
  1983 – assisted launching Breakfast Time
  1985 – Output Editor, Newsnight
  1988 – Editor, Nine O'Clock News (at the age of 30)
  1990 – Editor, Panorama
  1992 – Head of Features
  1994 – Head of Factual Programmes
  1996 – Controller, BBC Two
  1999 – Director, National and Regional Broadcasting
  2000 – became BBC Director of Television, but left the corporation in March 2002 to become Chief Executive of Channel 4.
  2002 – Thompson joined the board of trustees of Media Trust,[36] the UK's leading communications charity.
  2004 – 2012 Director General of the BBC
  Personal life[edit]
  Thompson is a Roman Catholic, and attends the Oratory Church of St Aloysius Gonzaga. In 2010, The Tablet named him as one of Britain’s most influential Roman Catholics.[37] Thompson lives in Oxford with his wife Jane Blumberg (daughter of Baruch Samuel Blumberg) whom he married in 1987. They have two sons and one daughter.[4]

  In 2011, Thompson was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by Edge Hill University.[38]

  He is a member of the Reform Club[2] and a patron of the Art Room charity in Oxford.[39]

  He was a guest in the Royal Box at the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee concert in June 2012.[40]

  In 2012, Thompson served as the first Humanitas Visiting Professor in Rhetoric and the Art of Public Persuasion at the University of Oxford.[41]

  References[edit]
  Specific citations:

  Jump up ^ "Mark Thompson, Esq Authorised Biography – Debrett's People of Today, Mark Thompson, Esq Profile". Debretts.co.uk. 31 July 1957. Retrieved 10 May 2012.
  ^ Jump up to: a b c “THOMPSON, Mark John Thompson,” in Who's Who 2009 (London: A & C Black, 2008); online ed., (Oxford: OUP, 2008), [1]. Retrieved 25 January 2009.
  Jump up ^ Arlidge, John (16 December 2001). "The Observer Profile". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 12 May 2010.
  ^ Jump up to: a b "NS Profile – Mark Thompson". New Statesman. 3 May 2004. Retrieved 27 January 2009.
  ^ Jump up to: a b "BBC Press Office: Biographies – Mark Thompson". Retrieved 12 October 2007.
  Jump up ^ "Minutes of Trust meeting 18 July 2007" (PDF). Retrieved 10 May 2012.
  Jump up ^ "Key points: Thompson speech to staff on editorial breaches". BBC News. 18 July 2007. Retrieved 10 May 2012.
  Jump up ^ "News 24 interview on editorial guideline breaches (video)". BBC News. 18 July 2007. Retrieved 10 May 2012.
  Jump up ^ "Transcript of Newsnight interview on editorial breaches and staff honesty". Newsarchive.awardspace.com. 18 July 2007. Retrieved 10 May 2012.
  Jump up ^ "Email from Mark Thompson to BBC staff on integrity". BBC. 19 July 2007. Retrieved 10 May 2012.
  Jump up ^ BBC to teach its stars honesty The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 8 March 2008
  Jump up ^ "Ross suspended for three months". BBC News. 30 October 2008. Retrieved 10 May 2012.
  Jump up ^ Russell Brand programme, BBC Radio 2, 18 October 2008 Archived 4 January 2009 at the Wayback Machine.
  Jump up ^ "BBC defends Ross pay and conduct". BBC News. 7 July 2006. Retrieved 10 May 2012.
  Jump up ^ Singh, Anita (2 September 2010). "BBC was biased against Thatcher, admits Mark Thompson". The Daily Telegraph. London.
  Jump up ^ Revoir, Paul (2 September 2010). "Yes, BBC was biased: Director General Mark Thompson admits a 'massive' lean to Left". Daily Mail. London.
  Jump up ^ Public Sector pay: The numbers BBC News, 20 September 2010
  Jump up ^ Asthana, Anushka. "The Guardian: Arts chief warns of cultural 'apartheid'". London. Retrieved 12 September 2007.
  Jump up ^ Smith, David. "The Guardian: Director blasts 'BBC ignorance'". London. Retrieved 12 September 2007.
  Jump up ^ Paris, Natalie (5 December 2007). "Jerry Springer play ruled not blasphemous". The Daily Telegraph. London. Retrieved 15 August 2012.
  Jump up ^ "Mark Thompson's Blog". BBC.
  Jump up ^ "BBC and the Gaza appeal". BBC.
  Jump up ^ "BBC under fire for 'censoring' Palestine lyric". The Guardian.
  Jump up ^ "BBC apologises for minimal coverage of Fogel murders". Haaretz.
  Jump up ^ "To my mind and, it appears, to millions of others, the BBC is increasingly biased towards Israel in this conflict, Heraldscotland staff". The Herald. Glasgow. 1 February 2009. Retrieved 10 May 2012.
  Jump up ^ Booth, Robert (22 October 2009). "BBC is right to allow BNP on Question Time, says Mark Thompson". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 12 May 2010.
  Jump up ^ Autosport. 2 September 2011 http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/94168. Missing or empty |title= (help)
  Jump up ^ Wardrop, Murray (15 January 2010). "'Your salary is wrong and corrosive', Mark Thompson , BBC director general, told". The Telegraph. London. Retrieved 19 July 2010.
  Jump up ^ Collins, Nick (30 October 2012). "Robert Winston: BBC is dumbing down science". The Daily Telegraph. London. Retrieved 31 October 2012.
  Jump up ^ "Jimmy Savile abuse allegations: Timeline", BBC, 15 October 2012. Retrieved 2012-10-30.
  Jump up ^ Nocera, Joe, "The Right Man for the Job?", The New York Times, October 29, 2012. Retrieved 2012-10-30.
  Jump up ^ "Mark Thompson named CEO of New York Times Co.". Boston Globe. Retrieved 2012-08-14.
  ^ Jump up to: a b c Andrew Rawnsley, Enough Said: What’s Gone Wrong With the Language of Politics? by Mark Thompson – review, Guardian (September 4, 2016).
  Jump up ^ John Lloyd, What happened to the language of politics? Rational political speech is under attack and failing to convince a sceptical public. Should we blame the media?, Financial Times (August 26, 2016).
  Jump up ^ "The World's Most Powerful People". Forbes. 11 November 2009. Retrieved 12 November 2009.
  Jump up ^ "Media Trust website".
  Jump up ^ "The Tablet's Top 100".
  Jump up ^ http://www.edgehill.ac.uk/news/2011/07/bbc-s-mark-thompson-receives-honorary-award/
  Jump up ^ "The Art Room". The Art Room. Retrieved 10 May 2012.
  Jump up ^ Daily Mail 5 June 2012 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2154875/Diamond-Jubilee-Concert-Who-sat-Queen-Royal-Box.html
  Jump up ^ Plunkett, John (5 November 2012). "Mark Thompson (Media),Oxford University,Media,BBC,Jimmy Savile (Media),UK news,New York Times (Media)". The Guardian. London.
  Other references:

  Channel 4 boss lands BBC top job (BBC)
  New BBC boss announces shake-up (BBC)
  Thompson "to transform BBC" (BBC)
  Will Thompson be toast over the day he bit a BBC colleague? (Guardian)
  BBC boss sank teeth into his newsroom colleague (Telegraph)
  Biting comment over job cuts at the BBC (Times)
  Thompson welcomes strike suspension (BBC)
  BBC Resources sell-off delayed (Press Gazette)
  Thompson sells BBC Broadcast – which becomes Red Bee Media (BBC)
  Thompson flogs Books – to Random House (BBC)
  BBC changes mark a digital future (BBC)
  Creative Future and Looney Tunes (Guardian)
  Media Trust

• Forbes - https://www.forbes.com/lists/2009/20/power-09_Mark-John-Thompson_AZS8.html

  The World's Most Powerful People
  #65 Mark John Thompson

  Director-General
  British Broadcasting Corporation
  U.K.
  Age: 52 Previous: Antonio Guterres
  Next: Klaus Schwab

  Cambridge Jones/Getty Images
  Director-general for world's oldest and largest broadcast organization; BBC World News global reach estimated at more than 400 million people; relied upon for impartiality worldwide. State support insulates giant from vagaries of advertising market, but not editorial lapses: fined 95,000 pounds ($150,000) in 2007 for broadcasting game shows listeners could not win. More recently, Thompson under scrutiny regarding expense account amounting to 78,000 pounds ($130,000) over the last five years.

• -

4/13/17, 1(00 AM
Print Marked Items
Watch Your Rhetoric
James Fallows
The New York Times Book Review.
(Sept. 11, 2016): Arts and Entertainment: p13(L). From Book Review Index Plus.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Fallows, James. "Watch Your Rhetoric." The New York Times Book Review, 11 Sept. 2016, p. 13(L). PowerSearch,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=GPS&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA463059176&it=r&asid=468c0d8b52ed8d87ed712cd07479e5c4. Accessed 13 Apr. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A463059176
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Recent Books of Particular Interest
The New York Times Book Review.
(Sept. 18, 2016): Arts and Entertainment: p26(L). From Book Review Index Plus.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Recent Books of Particular Interest." The New York Times Book Review, 18 Sept. 2016, p. 26(L). PowerSearch,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=GPS&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA463832569&it=r&asid=eb262a6e144ff1f79896d4c9e1b5db65. Accessed 13 Apr. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A463832569
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War of the words
Roger Mosey
New Statesman.
145.5331 (Sept. 9, 2016): p42. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2016 New Statesman, Ltd. http://www.newstatesman.com/
Full Text:
Enough Said: What's Gone Wrong With the Language of Politics? Mark Thompson
Bodley Head, 384pp. 25 [pounds sterling]
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
In April this year Kevin Spacey said that he was worried that his political drama series House of Cards, with its internecine warfare and sexual shenanigans, wasn't as extreme as real-life American politics has become: "I turn on the TV and watch the news ... then I think we haven't gone far enough." There might be something similar in the mind of Mark Thompson, now the chief executive of the New York Times and formerly the director general of the BBC.
When Thompson conceived his book, there were signs of a breakdown in politics across the Western world--but that was before the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union and Donald Trump was nominated to run for the presidency of the United States. Attempting to unpick what is happening to the rhetoric and the substance of politics in late 2016 is like trying to direct traffic in the fast lane of the Mi, with Ukippers and Corbynites hurtling towards you from opposite directions and the risk of a Trump-launched US missile screeching overhead.
This is an ambitious book. It seeks to analyse a crisis in the language of politics: the failure of mainstream politicians to communicate with their electorates, and the upheaval created by digital media, which has further disrupted rational policymaking. The sections about the modern world have a refreshing vigour and Thompson's passions drive him to conclusions that most of us would agree with; he is steadfast about the right to freedom of expression, the importance of investigative j ournalism and the need for an informed citizenry. However, he views much of this through the prism of history, and his readers experience the shaping of political philosophy through Plato, Thucydides and Aristophanes, as well as Wittgenstein, Heidegger and Orwell. He is also uncompromising in his choice of language. One sentence consists of just three words: "Metonymy, prolepsis, maximality."
Thompson is right to dismiss the myth of a golden age and his delving into the past shows that few things are new in political discourse--though he risks overstating the effects of rhetoric in comparison with the great tides of history. He writes approvingly of the view that it is "when public language fails and collective deliberation is no longer possible that the wider culture goes south and the institutions of politics and the state begin to spiral down". But this leads him to recount an anecdote from the English Civil War about a seditious pamphlet being thrown at the king--exemplifying innovation in media--yet not consider Oliver Cromwell's words and deeds. The broader question is which came first: the economic and social context of the conflict, or the polarisation and debasement of language?
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The book is at its most persuasive when it grapples with the dilemmas of our time. There is a sparkling passage on the impact of digital technology, which has promoted "the language of unbridled hatred", and Thompson skilfully uses health policy from the right and left--Andrew Lansley's Health and Social Care Bill in the UK and Barack Obama's changes to the US healthcare system--to show how the language of opposition can hinder attempts at reform. Privatisation and "death panels" were part of neither plan but those were the ideas that gained traction with the public, and the detail was irretrievably lost. Generally, he observes, "It is less that the policy centre ground has disappeared than that the zone of ambiguity and flexibility--that zone where almost all political progress takes place--has become rhetorically insupportable." Thompson diagnoses the problems provocatively and well, but his solutions are less clear. Partly this is because, for all the interesting theory, he remains a journalist who is uncomfortable with conformity. So, for instance, he won't quite hook himself to the argument that "settled" science should never be challenged and opponents denied airtime, and he is aware that expert opinion can clash with politics in a way that is tricky for a public broadcaster: "In the real world of quotidian live media, the challenge of segregating science and policy debate is borderline impossible."
I suspect that he is hampered by two more things. His current job would make it seem self-serving to promote his newspaper too much, even though the New York Times is one of the beacons of world journalism and we need more of its spirit to infuse the media of the future as it has done in print. And because of his former role at the BBC, he has to avoid trying to tell the bosses in Broadcasting House what to do, which prevents him from offering certain prescriptions for a better public discourse.
The need for this is brought most sharply into focus by Brexit, which is reflected in the book in late amendments. If staying in the EU was the rational thing to do in the eyes of the overwhelming majority of experts and our elected representatives, how was it that the public took such a different view? It may merely prove that the author's instincts were correct when he set out on this project, and demonstrate that the collapse of trust has become even more acute. But we contribute billions of pounds a year to the BBC as a public-service broadcaster, one that Thompson describes as a "bulwark of modern civilisation", and it remains dominant in the broadcast news market.
As Paul Johnson of the Institute for Fiscal Studies wrote recently in the Times, there is an urgency to resolving how much the responsible media should drive home the facts--even if these facts are in opposition to a political platform. Thompson writes proudly of his role in rebooting the BBC's journalism in the 1980s under John Birt, and it is impossible to avoid wondering whether there should not be a similar reappraisal now, after the corporation's curiously robotic EU referendum coverage.
And that is the itch left by this book. Thompson argues, "We are living through a long war for freedom of expression and it is going badly," and he questions whether "old-fashioned journalism" can survive or, indeed, if it deserves to do so. Yet, having found the language to describe the intensity of the crisis, what is he going to do about it and how can we collectively take action before it's too late?
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Roger Mosey is Master of Selwyn College, Cambridge, and a former BBC executive
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Mosey, Roger. "War of the words." New Statesman, 9 Sept. 2016, p. 42. PowerSearch, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=GPS&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA465809543&it=r&asid=898c139a5016974942c11b2d3a1cf57a. Accessed 13 Apr. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A465809543
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Thompson, Mark. Enough Said: What's Gone Wrong with the Language of Politics?
Jill Ortner
Library Journal.
141.15 (Sept. 15, 2016): p104. From Book Review Index Plus.
COPYRIGHT 2016 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Full Text:
Thompson, Mark. Enough Said: What's Gone Wrong with the Language of Politics? St. Martin's. Sept. 2016. 352p. notes. index. ISBN 9781250059574. $27.99; ebk. ISBN 9781466864726. POL SCI
Thompson, president and CEO of the New York Times Company and former director-general of the BBC, analyzes communication theory and the ways the media struggles to meet the current dependence on compressed phrasing to fit the 24/7 news cycle and to meet the immediate comprehension demands of consumers. He provides background on communication theory, detailing rhetorical basics such as those laid out by Aristotle, then follows developments though the 20th century focusing on Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Margaret Thatcher, and Ronald Reagan as consummate users of language that enlightens and persuades. Chapters are devoted to marketing language, unfiltered debate on the Internet, and rationalism vs. authenticism--speech that relies on simple expression to convey honesty, whether truly genuine or not. One fascinating section, "Consign it to the Flames," evaluates and explains how the media meets the challenge to scientific information by such groups as the anti-vaccine movement and climate change deniers and looks at the responsibility of the industry to determine when to offer balance to the debate or defer to scientists' conclusions. VERDICT Readers well versed in communication theory and those interested in media studies will find the information here worthwhile and thought provoking.--Jill Ortner, SUNY Buffalo Libs.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Ortner, Jill. "Thompson, Mark. Enough Said: What's Gone Wrong with the Language of Politics?" Library Journal, 15
Sept. 2016, p. 104. PowerSearch, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=GPS&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA463632591&it=r&asid=953bce0fa1ef4ce03c29b966388678dc. Accessed 13 Apr. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A463632591
about:blank Page 6 of 6

Fallows, James. "Watch Your Rhetoric." The New York Times Book Review, 11 Sept. 2016, p. 13(L). PowerSearch, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=GPS&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA463059176&it=r. Accessed 13 Apr. 2017. "Recent Books of Particular Interest." The New York Times Book Review, 18 Sept. 2016, p. 26(L). PowerSearch, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=GPS&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA463832569&it=r. Accessed 13 Apr. 2017. Mosey, Roger. "War of the words." New Statesman, 9 Sept. 2016, p. 42. PowerSearch, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=GPS&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA465809543&it=r. Accessed 13 Apr. 2017. Ortner, Jill. "Thompson, Mark. Enough Said: What's Gone Wrong with the Language of Politics?" Library Journal, 15 Sept. 2016, p. 104. PowerSearch, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=GPS&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA463632591&it=r. Accessed 13 Apr. 2017.

• NY Times
  https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/11/books/review/inside-the-new-york-times-book-review-mark-thompsons-enough-said.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FThompson%2C%20Mark%20John%20(1957-%20)&action=click&contentCollection=timestopics®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=collection
  Word count: 1052

  Inside The New York Times Book Review: Mark Thompson’s ‘Enough Said’
  SEPT. 9, 2016
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  Inside The New York Times Book Review: 'Enough Said' 50:12
  Mark Thompson discusses "Enough Said," and Kati Marton talks about "True Believer: Stalin's Last American Spy." Pamela Paul
  In The New York Times Book Review, James Fallows reviews “Enough Said: What’s Gone Wrong With the Language of Politics?” by Mark Thompson, the chief executive of The New York Times Company. Fallows writes:

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  Given Thompson’s standing as a past leader of one of the world’s dominant news organizations and the current head of another, what he thinks about the interactions among politicians, citizens and the press is by definition important. I don’t think this book will change the continuing debates about “bias” and “objectivity,” the separation of the public into distinct fact universes, the disappearing boundary between entertainment and civic life, the imperiled concept of “truth” or the other important topics it addresses. But it offers many instructive allusions, useful judgments and important refinements on these themes — and provides reassurance by its mere existence that someone in the author’s position is grappling so earnestly with such questions.

  On this week’s podcast, Thompson discusses “Enough Said”; Alexandra Alter has news from the publishing world; Kati Marton talks about “True Believer: Stalin’s Last American Spy”; and Gregory Cowles and John Williams on what people are reading. Pamela Paul is the host.

  Here are the books mentioned in this week’s “What We’re Reading”:

  “Play It As It Lays” by Joan Didion

  “A Time to Be Born” by Dawn Powell

  “Washington Square” by Henry James

  “The North Water” by Ian McGuire

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  https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/11/books/review/mark-thompson-enough-said.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FThompson%2C%20Mark%20John%20(1957-%20)&action=click&contentCollection=timestopics®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=3&pgtype=collection
  Word count: 1446

  Mark Thompson’s New Book on the Use and Misuse of Rhetoric
  By JAMES FALLOWSSEPT. 5, 2016
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  ENOUGH SAID
  What’s Gone Wrong With the Language of Politics?
  By Mark Thompson
  342 pp. St. Martin’s Press. $27.99.

  In the “Afterthoughts” to his book about the decline of public language in politics, Mark Thompson mentions something that for me clarified the 12 chapters that went before. Thompson, who grew up in England and was director-general of the BBC before taking his current job as chief executive of The New York Times Company, was invited in 2012 to give a series of lectures on the “art of public persuasion” at Oxford, his alma mater. From those lectures and subsequent discussions, he writes, “Enough Said” arose.

  Knowing the book’s genesis is useful in understanding the kind of value it has, and what it does not do. To oversimplify, the most influential nonfiction books usually exist either to tell a story, as with “Seabiscuit” and “All the President’s Men,” or to advance an argument, as with “Silent Spring” and “The Feminine Mystique.” Ideally they combine the two, as for example Michael Lewis did with his tale of the origins of the 2008 financial crisis, “The Big Short.”

  Lecture series, and books derived from them, are different in that their assumed interest comes from watching a thinker engage with a set topic and seeing what insights emerge, rather than expecting a clear narrative or argument to ring through. That’s the case with “Enough Said.” Given Thompson’s standing as a past leader of one of the world’s dominant news organizations and the current head of another, what he thinks about the interactions among politicians, citizens and the press is by definition important. I don’t think this book will change the continuing debates about “bias” and “objectivity,” the separation of the public into distinct fact universes, the disappearing boundary between entertainment and civic life, the imperiled concept of “truth” or the other important topics it addresses. But it offers many instructive allusions, useful judgments and important refinements on these themes — and provides reassurance by its mere existence that someone in the author’s position is grappling so earnestly with such questions.

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  For me the book is strongest by far when it is most like a story — Thompson’s own story, of his 30-plus years with the BBC. They began in his early 20s, when he was a research assistant trainee, continued with his rise to producer, editor and top executive, and coincided with dramatic changes in both politics and the language of public affairs in Britain. Thompson describes these vividly and well. He emphasizes the shift in political rhetoric from Margaret Thatcher’s forcefulness — “hard-edged, insistent, utterly sure of itself” — to the smoothly sophisticated message discipline and media management of Tony Blair in his early years. He also describes the ways, successful and otherwise, that he and others in the British press tried to keep up. Crucially, he knows the nuances of these people and predicaments so well that he need not stop with saying that certain choices were difficult or complex. He can go on to argue why, despite the complexity, decisions he made were right (for instance, to introduce a new kind of news coverage in the Thatcher era) or why distortions by some politicians (notably Blair’s, in urging Britain into war in Iraq) were worse than others.

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  Although Thompson worked in the United States for a time as a BBC producer in the 1980s and returned once he joined The Times four years ago, his feel for American politics is naturally not a match for what he knows about Britain. When providing American examples for his analysis, he often stops at the “difficult and complex” stage. One example: In a survey of books about the dysfunction of the United States federal government, he mentions “It’s Even Worse Than It Looks,” a prescient 2012 book by Norman J. Ornstein and Thomas E. Mann about problems within the Republican Party. But he dismisses it by saying that “their thrust is resolutely one-sided” and that “blaming an adverse trend in political culture entirely on one party . . . is scarcely a recipe for reducing political division.” This sounds balanced, but it doesn’t acknowledge the influential and carefully argued point of Ornstein and Mann’s book, which was precisely that the extremist forces in modern politics had been much more damaging on the Republican than on the Democratic side.

  Another example: Thompson contrasts the “two rhetorics” of public life, what Mario Cuomo called the poetry of campaigning and the prose of governance, and says that Barack Obama is “perhaps the most obvious example . . . ‘the change we need’ giving way almost overnight to tight-lipped and sometimes testy managerialism.” In Thompson’s view, “the word-worlds of Obama the campaigner and Obama the president turned out to be so different that it was almost as if they were twin brothers with contrasting personalities.” In fact, compared with that of other presidents, Obama’s rhetoric is remarkable for how little it has changed over the years. As a matter of achievement, the President Obama who has not closed Guantánamo or cleaned up Wall Street is a disappointment to some of his supporters. But the rhetorician Obama who spoke to the Democratic Convention in Philadelphia this summer could have taken whole paragraphs from the speech with which the young Illinois State Senator Barack Obama made his national debut at the Democratic Convention in Boston 12 years ago. Both spoke of America’s constantly becoming a better version of itself. Both emphasized what united rather than divided their fellow citizens.

  Beyond British and American politics, Thompson covers a wide range of additional subjects. He discusses the classic Greek elements of rhetoric, including logos (argument), ethos (the character of the speaker) and pathos (emotion), along with other Greek rhetorical concepts. He talks about the punchy, Trump-like language of Vladimir Putin and the theatrics of Silvio Berlusconi. A whole chapter is built around George Orwell’s famous essay “Politics and the English Language.” He punctuates his discussions with sweeping summaries like this one, in reference to social media: “The art of persuasion, once the grandest of the humanities and accessible at its highest level only to those of genius — a Demosthenes or a Cicero, a Lincoln or a Churchill — is acquiring many of the attributes of a computational science. Rhetoric not as art but as algorithm.”

  Thompson examines the rhetorical extremes through which the British public considered its Brexit vote and the American public considers the prospect of a President Trump, and the ways residents of both countries evaluate rhetoric about climate change. He gives few details about the strategy he is applying in his current job, at The Times, to keep the newspaper economically viable and credible to its readers, but he closes a passage on the digital transformation of news with a lament that “traditional” journalists may have become “a tribe whose discourse no longer has the breadth or the adaptability to reflect reality, but whose befuddlement is such that, even if they are aware of the dilemma, they are more likely to blame reality than themselves. . . . The important question about much old-fashioned journalism is not whether it can survive as a profession but whether it deserves to — and whether anyone would miss it if it disappeared.”

  Thompson’s employees, and those at other traditional news outlets, will be relieved to hear that his answer is yes: Journalism matters and journalists deserve to survive. He closes the book with some unexceptional but important advice for all affected parties: Politicians should not say one thing and do another; journalists shouldn’t lie and should be fair; members of the public should be more willing to pay attention and absorb real facts. The destination is not surprising, but there is enlightenment along the way.

  James Fallows is a national correspondent for The Atlantic and the author of many books, including “Breaking the News.”

• The Guardian
  https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/sep/04/enough-said-whats-gone-wrong-with-language-politics-mark-thompson-review
  Word count: 1331

  Enough Said: What’s Gone Wrong With the Language of Politics? by Mark Thompson – review
  This important study by the New York Times chief executive and former BBC boss identifies many culprits for the destructiveness of political debate
  The rise of ‘demagogic charlatans’ such as Donald Trump tells us much about an age in which ‘vituperative exaggeration is rampant’.
  The rise of ‘demagogic charlatans’ such as Donald Trump tells us much about an age in which ‘vituperative exaggeration is rampant’.
  Photograph: Matt York/AP
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  Andrew Rawnsley
  Sunday 4 September 2016 01.59 EDT Last modified on Monday 6 February 2017 09.11 EST
  Plato, Socrates and Thucydides fretted about it. Hobbes was anguished in 17th-century England. In 1946, Orwell published his influential essay, Politics and the English Language, in which he shivered over the frightening ease with which dark forces can exploit perverted rhetoric for malign ends.

  In this important book, Mark Thompson is quick to concede that ours is far from the first age of alarm about the way we conduct political debate and he is not the first to raise the spectre that it could lead to even scarier destinations than Donald Trump. It is his elegantly argued contention that our crisis has characteristics that are peculiar to our time and there are specific accelerants that make our circumstances exceptional. One is the technology that has given political actors the capability to reach more people more of the time in more places than at any previous stage of human history. “Words hurtle through virtual space with infinitesimal delay,” he writes. “A politician can plant an idea in 10 million other minds before she leaves the podium.”

  ‘Could he actually win?’ Dave Eggers at a Donald Trump rally
  Read more
  Yet while the noise has magnified, the content has become increasingly infantilised. Argument has turned cruder, ruder, more polarised and less anchored in facts. Much of media treatment of political debate has gone the same way, further cramping the spaces in which reasonable people can engage in rational discourse.

  Thompson, a former director general of the BBC turned chief executive of the New York Times, usually advances his case in cool, nuanced and forensic prose, but he is a blistering flame-thrower about the consequences of the digital revolution. In the beginning, internet idealists imagined that it would encourage wider and richer debate. They didn’t anticipate the creation of echo chambers in which the committed can seal themselves off from any contrary opinion or inconvenient truth by talking only to those who agree with them. Nor did the prophets of digital see coming the tidal waves of rage and hate that crash down on anyone daring to venture a contrary view. Digital has certainly intensified the political news cycle, but it is hard to make a convincing claim that it has done much for the quality.

  “Most of the young people who work for the new publishers find themselves not knee-deep in a war zone or with the time and resources to pursue a heroic long-term investigation, but locked in a digital sweatshop, ripping off other people’s work, making lists and chasing clicks, racing to keep one step ahead of the scything blades of Facebook’s unforgiving algorithm,” Thompson writes. He also gives a kicking to newspapers and conventional broadcasters who, scared of looking backward and hungry for free content, give further amplification to the howlround.

  The result is political discourse in which there is no longer any presumption of good faith between opponents, “just a fight to the political death, a fight in which every linguistic weapon is fair game”. Rhetorical self-restraint is abandoned and vituperative exaggeration, often vaulting into outright mendacity, is rampant.

  The nihilistic rejection of the concept of expertise is having some disastrous consequences for policymaking
  Conventional politicians of the mainstream are both culprits and victims of this trend. The easy bromides, sleights of tongue, spin and other techniques they borrowed from the world of commercial marketing got them by in peace and prosperity, but are now found wanting during a period of conflict and austerity. Alienation has been magnified by military misadventures, the financial crash and the uneven impacts of globalisation. You may have recently heard Tony Blair mournfully wondering whether the type of broadly centrist politics practised by him and Bill Clinton is now defunct. Barack Obama was possibly the last of their kind that we will see for a while and his career trajectory epitomises the problem. The messiah of boundless hope on the campaign trail became the weary professor of complexity in the White House. There has always been a tension between the different demands of acquiring power and wielding it. Modern electioneering has become about messages that are cut-through crude; government involves making tricky, often finely balanced and frequently painful trade-offs. That tension has become more acute as the challenges facing leaders have become more technically intricate at the same time as contemporary campaigning has intensified the pressure to oversimplify. The result is a recurring loop of “brave promises followed by glum disappointment”. Coupled with an accelerated news cycle, we now travel from “the peak of expectation to the trough of disillusion” faster than ever.

  From Trump to Brexit rhetoric: how today's politicians have got away with words
  Read more
  That has set the stage for the rise of demagogic charlatans like Trump. He is one of the poorest orators to have become a US presidential candidate in a long time. He is a terrible speaker, incapable of rising any higher than the repetition of inflammatory crudities. Ronald Reagan could make a phrase sing, whether it was his own or one composed for him. Trump could not deliver a poetic line even if he employed anyone with the wit to draft one for him. His campaign slogan – Make America Great Again! – could hardly be less original. Nor more duplicitous. For all its flaws, the US remains the world’s greatest economic and military power. Thompson makes the cute point that the I-tell-it-like-it-is “anti-rhetoric” performed by Trump is an especially deceptive form of rhetoric. The ancient Greeks had a name for this trick. They called it parataxis. “This is the way generals and dictators have always spoken to distinguish themselves from the cavilling civilians they mean to sweep aside.” There’s nothing as fake as the politician promising “authenticism”.

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  Trump is just one symptom of a deeper disease, according to Thompson. The nihilistic rejection of the concept of expertise – on the grounds that everything is now just a matter of opinion – is having some disastrous consequences for policy-making, especially around healthcare and science. He gives a slap on the wrist to those of his former colleagues at the BBC who interpret “balance” as giving equal airtime to a professor of cosmology and a flat-earther. In a post-fact world, public understanding of issues is being degraded and voters rendered less well equipped to make reasoned choices about policy options. The Chinese politburo, campus censors who close down debate in the name of political correctness, and Twitter flash mobs have more in common than they know. “All are sure they are right… None of them trust the rest of us.” And they all seek to gag anyone who doesn’t share their worldview. His concluding chapters take on an apocalyptic tone, shuddering that “the enemies of free speech are gathering… intolerance and illiberalism are on the rise almost everywhere”.

  Then he rescues himself from despair by reminding himself that public language has come back to life before, even as the last rites were being read over it. There’s hope for reasoned persuasion yet. In the uncertain interim, what can you do? “Open your ears. Think. Speak. Laugh. Cut through the noise.” It is not bad advice.

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