When Spotlight won the Oscar for best picture, every print journalist cheered. But the celebration of brave Boston Globe reporters investigating paedophile priests flatters our dying industry. Most people distrust us and have stopped buying our products. Populists in particular, from Marine Le Pen to Donald Trump, make a living out of insulting us.
Worse, they have a point. We are flummoxed by their rise, in large part because we rarely report from the places — mostly exurbs and poor provincial towns — where their voters live. Journalists in western countries (including me) tend to huddle in a few rich big cities, speaking to people like ourselves. No wonder the people we exclude are angry.
When a clever ruling class encounters popular anger, it knows what to do: change a little so that everything can stay the same. The classic case is 19th-century Britain: toffs avoided revolution and clung on to power by gradually letting more ordinary people vote. In today’s populist moment, the media — like every establishment group — need to change. Journalists should spread into the provinces and listen to ordinary people.