I received a link from a friend to a British online talk show Culture Clash presented by 18 Doughty Street. http://doughty.gdbtv.com/player.php
The show perked my interest, in part, because the former partner of my friend Damian Thompson, a journalist for the Daily Telegraph, was on the panel, and also because the discussion was about the popular exhibition First Emperor in the British Museum.
The panel members included:
Peter Whittle, The New Culture Forum, moderator
Dame Jessica Rawson, Merton College, Oxford, history advisor to the exhibition
Munira Mirza, founder Manifesto Club
Igor Toronyi-Lalic, contributing editor, Catholic Herald
Damian Thompson, Leader Writer, Daily Telegraph
The moderator explained that the panel was to explore why the exhibition was popular and what it could tell visitors about China.
The half hour show turned out to be a poorly led dialogue by a moderator who admitted on air that he was no expert in Chinese culture or history. However, from a media study perspective, the show was a brilliant case study of the danger of our pundit-driven media culture.
The panelists were successful individuals in their own fields. Peter Whittle is a veteran journalist who has written for The Sunday Times, Daily Telegraph and LA Times.
Professor Dame Jessica Rawson is a scholar who has dedicated 35 years of her career studying Chinese art and history. She has written a number of books and papers on Chinese art, archaeology and rituals.
Damian Thompson, a historian by education, holds a Ph.D in sociology of religion. He has written three religion related books and airs his comments often on cultural, religious and political issues in the British media. He was also the former editor of The Catholic Herald.
Munira Mirza is a Ph.D student at the University of Kent and arts consultant for the London East Research Institute. Like Mr. Thompson, she also has made a name for herself as a pundit through her work for the Manifesto Club and her BBC Radio Four appearances.
Igor Toronyi-Lalic, is 25-years old, a friend of Mr. Thompson (according to Thompson’s blog) and a freelance arts journalist.
The composition of this panel presented a problem. Only Professor Rawson was a Chinese scholar on the program who had the breadth and depth of knowledge to discuss the relevance of the terracotta army of China’s first emperor. Unfortunately, unlike Thompson, Toronyi-Lalic or the moderator, Professor Rawson does not work in the media professionally. Despite her calm, intelligent answers to some painfully ignorant questions and comments, she was put in a defensive position within minutes of the program.
When Toronyi-Lalic dismissed the exhibition as media hype and claimed that the terracotta figures had little artistic values compared to Greek sculptures, Rawson explained to her colleagues that one has to better understand the artistic and historical context of these figures to appreciate their value. She defended the administrative skills and the achievements of the First Emperor to explain why she claimed the discovery of the terracotta army to be the most important in the 20th century.
The importance of any achievement of course is relative and has to be put in the appropriate context. Professor Rawson’s mistake was making such a high claim on camera, leaving herself vulnerable to be the prey of Thompson, who quickly dismissed her claim as self-serving because she is an academic. Such a cheap shot is simply hypocritical, especially coming from Thompson, when as a self-established media pundit, his opinion is his only currency and he would do anything to inflate the value of his opinion over others.
In face of a moderator who failed to lead and two commentators who did not have the expertise to contribute to a meaningful dialogue, Thompson turned the interview to his advantage, addressing well rehearsed topics that he was comfortable with. On this blog, he reiterated the attack against Professor Rawson:
...if we were to follow Dame Jessica’s advice and ditch our "Western" artistic criteria when judging Chinese artifacts, we might soon end up ditching our "Western" critique of China’s human rights record. Which is precisely what Beijing hopes will happen.
This argument is simply nonsense when any Chinese school children and anyone who has rudimentary knowledge of Chinese history, would understand the First Emperor was no Gandhi. In fact, the ambition and achievements of the emperor which were so clearly illustrated by the terracotta army, provide us with a lot of insight into the Chinese culture. This cultural sensitivity is crucial for the West to work better and closer with the current Chinese government on pressing issues such as human rights, the environment and economic expansion.
Despite the uncouth bullying that Professor experienced in the studio, she left the audience with one piece of sound advice - learning takes effort.
Anyone can be a pundit but it takes years of hard work and training to be an expert.
