John Lloyd, editor of the FT magazine had a thoughtful piece in the Jan 16th issue (limited to subscribers) about politicians and the broadcast media. Many observers have noted, some to deplore, the way in which political interviews have become contests, rather than attempts to elicit truth. Paxman's question "Why is this bastard lying to me?" speaks of a superiority and contempt difficult to reconcile with any truth-seeking mission of journalism. The aim seems no longer to be to elicit truth, but to humiliate and degrade the subject. Many viewers are irritated that the personality of the journalist overshadows anything the politician might be trying to tell us. Indeed, the constant interruptions actually prevent it. Lloyd suggests that:

The broadcast media class has, in the past two or three decades, positioned itself - economically, socially and morally - above the political class, and therefore treats it with jovial scorn and condescension.

He quotes from a game on the BBC Newsnight website. The game, Deadringer Game - NewsFighter II, tells you that "You’re about to enter the NewsFight studio and take control of Kirsty Wark. Can you defeat Tony Blair and make him answer the question, or will he walk all over you?" Lloyd tells us that:

Being the best, in broadcaster's terms, is what it says: being better than the politicians and other public figures, who must be either seen to be defeated, or they will be seen to "walk all over you." The political interview becomes an exercise in confirming superiority – or in suffering the loss of face and sense of shame which any upper class would feel when bested by an inferior.

These days the media journalists are often bigger celebrities with higher incomes than the politicians who must jump through the media’s hoops in order to speak to their electors. This does not mean people trust them more. In the MORI poll of trustworthiness, repeated annually, the only group which regularly scores lower than politicians is that of journalists. And while the mainstream media might exult in their superiority over the lowly politicians, there are now guys in pyjamas sitting out there tracking their every move and being just as merciless to them as they are to their subjects, as Dan Rather discovered.