July 20, 2003, 12.12pm • No comments (be first!) » • 1,079 Views

Mediocrisy

Something that occurred to me… there’s a critical contradiction in our national media which is more hypocritical than any which I’ve encountered…

Because we’re a flag-waving bunch of nationalists chomping at the bit to out every Tom, Dic and Hari as Welsh, it’s clear that *Wales is great*.

That’s official, by the way. Note it in the “Cool Cymru” rhetoric, still circulating four years after its time, and in the startled surprise and pride we’re commanded to feel whenever anyone Welsh does anything remotely good out there.

But journalism has such a deep mistrust of politicians and the state that its regular approach to reporting them is to be constantly critical. So-and-so failed in this, such a target was missed; it’s easy to argue.

All this combines to give an already imponent National Assembly a worse name.

But we can’t have it both ways.

Wales as a nation is a thoroughly modern and largely political concept.

That is, the imagined community of the nation is largely dependent on political statehood - it is really devolution (and, yes, Cool Cymru) to which Wales can owe its increasingly autonomous self-confidence.

So, Wales is great, but it’s also shit? Our great new nation must be defined in the political terms our media so despise and distrust.

Perhaps the Welsh as a race are intrinsically fabulous - it’s just the representatives we elect who are repulsive? Well, I don’t buy it.

It’s time the popular media owned up to the public they claim to serve - stop the blind mistrust of and conflicting approach to the state, and accept our three million inhabitants are not all fine, talented, proud beings; drop the flag.