The danger of uncaring elites

The State of Us: The Good News and the Bad News about Today’s Society
Jon Snow
Bantam
April 2023
384 pages
ISBN: 978-1787635708

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Though this book was written two years ago, its message is, if anything, more relevant today. Jon Snow will be familiar to anyone who has watched Channel 4’s nightly news bulletin, which he anchored for decades. What we might not know is that his father was an Anglican bishop, that he was expelled from Liverpool University for his anti-apartheid activism, and that all his life he has grappled with his upper-class origins and the stark inequalities in Britain and other countries.

The seeds that brought the book to fruition were sown by the horrific fire in Grenfell Tower, a West London apartment block, in 2017. Some weeks before the fire, Snow and Microsoft founder Bill Gates had been adjudicating the final of a nationwide children’s debating competition, and they were particularly impressed by the winner—a remarkably poised twelve-year-old girl from an ethnic minority. She was not from a wealthy background; her father was a London black cab driver. Tragically, the family lived on the twenty-second floor of Grenfell Tower, and they all perished in the inferno. Snow highlights how the tower block, home to hundreds of less well-off people in one of London’s wealthiest boroughs, was a disaster waiting to happen, with catastrophic failures in adherence to basic health and safety standards. In Grenfell Tower, as in many other areas, Snow argues that the less well-off, including immigrants, were and are at the mercy of uncaring elites who govern at national and local levels.

He goes on to argue that across society, there has been a process of elite capture, whereby public resources that should benefit everyone fail to do so because economically, politically, and/or socially advantaged groups hijack those resources and make them serve their own narrower interests, thus disenfranchising ordinary people. His excellent chapter on how the Brexit vote in 2016 was won and lost is well worth reading, as it shows how voters can be manipulated into voting for something Snow believes was clearly against their better interests and those of their country.

The book also addresses the dangers to press freedom, online abuse of journalists, and the responsibilities of the next generation of journalists, along with the hazards they will face. Russia’s war against Ukraine had begun when Snow was writing the book, though there are very few references to Donald Trump – his re-election probably did not seem likely in 2023. I write this review with the noise of “the greatest first hundred days of any American President ever” ringing across news bulletins.

The need for a responsible, free press is not confined to the UK, Russia, or the USA. Here in Ireland, we have seen manipulation of the media, bias on many issues, and groupthink. Snow gives his readers food for thought on the high ideals to which all journalists should aspire, without fear or favour, even in what may be very challenging and dangerous times ahead.