Ive been going through the final edits on a biography of Edward de Bono. It all started ten years ago when I met Edward by accident and felt no one had captured his warmth and humour, preferring to target his commercial success, his love of islands and the fact he mentioned Marmite to solve some world problems and was into colourful hats. When he died in June last year, the obituaries of the respective newspapers were largely tired cliched attempts which Edward would have expected from an industry run by powerful proud puerile men. One radio presenter who interviewed me asked a question that was so long and convoluted I realised she was embodying one of the criticisms De Bono levelled at presenters/journalists - namely limited comprehension of the subject matter, and one who revelled in the sound and syllable of her own voice and rehearsed perception of projected fact. And then I did BBC Radio Four which was great. So there are the exceptions.
He did not like, trust or respect journalists and especially editors, acknowledging well intentioned journalists would often write copy which the editor would then change or headline differently to sell a story, never letting what he actually said get in the way of the word count and editorial agenda. He once told me editors and owners of media may appear to have political and social ideologies but their default is always to make money at all and any cost. The more I researched his dealings with the media, I realised why and how he came to take this view, although this did not stop him from attempting to high light how media may be instrumental in teaching the reader/view/listener how to think, rather than what to think and feel. Or even more insidiously telling them what they think and feel.
In Edward's 1990 book I am Right You Are Wrong,(surely a mantra for any PPP man) he comments ‘The sheer ability of journalists to comprehend different fields is usually limited so they have to fall back on three basics: the human angle; some gimmick aspect: attack. The prime purpose is not exposition of the subject but journalistic ‘interest’. He called this ludecy - something which exists for no value other than to maintain its own existence. Bureaucracy in all its forms is ludecy but he told me, media like politics has emerged as the embodiment of Ludecy. ‘Clash and controversy are intrinsically more interesting than agreement, so disagreements have to be played up and emphasised. Scandals are fun, so personalities rate more than substance.’ (P266). De Bono’s book was written in 1990 and is full of wisdoms about not only journalists, but politicians - who play into this short term, puerile nature of editors who write the headline to sell the story rather than tell the story. Politicians are there to win for the short term, just as the media are there to sell the story for the short term. Their throw away comments are designed to be thrown away, replaced by other thrown away comments, merged with a heady mix of soundbites and platitudes, playing to and nurturing the fickle forgetfulness of the consumer and voter.
Edward was aware of the relationship between politicians and the media, which over the years has been transparent - Boris Johnson saying his boss is the Telegraph only last year, and other little known facts that Rupert Murdoch has been a regular visitor to Number Ten over the past few months, and that Ministers regularly comment they need to spend more time on PR than they do on actually doing their ‘jobs’. Someone like Edward, who had the ability to stand back and distinguish between the fluency of style over the integrity of thinking of the politician and editor alike, must have annoyed them immensely. Not only that he was substantial in character as well as in his thinking. He was academically brilliant, understood how to apply that academic excellence to the 'real' world (as academia intriguingly calls everything outside academia), highly proficient at sport, handsome, and what a lot of PPP men are not, tall. Edward would often tell me fluency of style was always mistaken for integrity of thinking, which is why so many charming shallow men - and occasionally women - make it to the top of ‘their game’ and create a system to ensure only those with the same ideologies are able to rise through the ranks as well. No man - and it is men - likes to be seen through, especially ones who are insecure enough to hold onto power at any cost and have no concept of enough, common and consistent traits in all men at the top of commercial and non commercial establishment. Edward commented on the shouting at Prime Ministers Question Time and how it is a boorish playground of little boys pretending to be men, not ‘like’ but ‘is’, and how the role of journalists is to challenge the thinking rather than the person, but that it is difficult for someone to challenge the thinking of others when you do not know how to think yourself.
How perception effects our thinking has been played with by Hollywood. The films including Matrix, Inception, Arrival, Lucy, and perhaps with more zeitgeist relevance Wag the Dog, all challenge how humans are so open to being manipulated into thinking or rather not thinking and allowing the experts, philosophers, scientists, politicians, columnists to do it for them, allowing them to seek out the ‘truth’ even if all truth is only based on perception, and if there is a truth, it is only, what Edward called a ‘proto-truth’ only ’true’ for one moment in time. There is no fake news, or news, there is just pictures and conversation, which as Alice in her Wonderland commented, made something worth reading.
Docudramas and reality TV rather than blurring the lines between fiction and non fiction, have emphasised how events need to be photoshopped to keep the attention of the viewer/reader/listener, and how anything and everything we read, listen to or view, is subjective perspective, designed to, as De Bono eloquently puts it, focus on the ‘clash and controversy’ of life, making even the banal and inane appear extraordinary, and I so doing make the extraordinary everyday. Media is increasingly designed to trigger fear not perspective.
Columnists are paid to express their opinions, hired for their fluency of style over integrity of thinking and their ability to provoke rather than reason. You are hard pressed to find articles where the use of emotive adjectives have been stripped from the copy. All deaths are tragic. All battles are catastrophic. I noted even in one case accidents were being described as unexpected. This is not the remit of the journalist or even the columnist but the editor who has the final say and often writes the headline. I myself have been subject to the criticisms Edward levelled at journalists. Six years ago, I offered to teach yoga at the House of Commons, in part to encourage the practice to be put on the national curriculum. It has been proven to facilitate calm and focus and I realised this was a way in. So did a Minister. The Mail were running a piece and asked to interview me. I said only if I could receive approval. The feature was great. The headline read ‘Tax payer pays for MPs yoga’. The minister was rightly annoyed and the yoga didn’t happen. The fact they weren’t paying and I offered to hold the classes for free wouldn’t have mattered. As one journalist colleague told me, in that case the headline would have read, ‘MPs abuse single mother yoga instructor’. Clash and controversy as Edward put it. Don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story, even if the ‘good’ story is the truth.
De Bono met many senior politicians and editors and owners of publishing houses, and was involved in many court cases, including that of the Oz Trail, which were misreported by these ‘usually limited’ journalists and the comments in many of his books; especially I Am Right You Are Wrong, indicate although he mixed with these people, he wasn’t of these people and thought their ideologies and vanities dangerous rather than just merely annoying or bullying.
And as a writer who has been bylined as a journalist over the years, listening to the conversations on radio and watching the shouty presenters on TV, radio and print, headlining on social media, who are followed and liked, who the reader/listener/view is deemed to ‘know’, as they cast their inane comments on Brexit, pandemic and now World War, in the hope their voice and perception of the story becomes bigger than the story itself, I realise why Edward was so urgent in wanting to teach children how to think in schools and universities.
For when you learn how to think, not only do you realise how all thinking is based on perception, but that there is no place for powerful puerile proud men in media or politics. All ideologies are dangerous no matter how well intentioned, but in these areas which have the power to influence the lives of others so directly, he realised the potential danger of not teaching children how to think. For when you learn how to think there is no place for powerful puerile proud men. In professional or personal life. Which is probably why there are no thinking classes in schools and De Bono never received the formal recognition in life he deserved.
