Journalists are creatures of habit. Which is a nice way of saying they’re lazy.
When they’re writing a story and need to get an expert’s opinion, they don’t randomly look up a list of doctors, or psychologists or whatever then close their eyes, point at the page and call whoever comes up.
They call someone they know will give them a good juicy quote and who has the title to back it up. In the game they’re called rent-a-quotes.
Enter adolescent psychologist and media hussy Michael Carr-Gregg. This character came to my attention a fortnight ago when he was busily bagging Big Brother in the media.
According to him, having Corey Worthington on the show was “tantamount to child abuse”. Now leaving aside how offensive that is to a child who has been the victim of real mental, physical or sexual abuse – it got my goat that this guy gets to say whatever he likes based on his title.
Because there are plenty of adolescent psychologists who would think he was full of it. ’Cos psychologists are a bit like lawyers – you can always find one who’ll give you the opposite opinion.
It got my goat that Carr-Gregg was clearly letting his personal TV tastes spill over into his esteemed psychological assessments. When he described the housemates on Big Brother in the article as a “bunch of idiots” it struck me it was hardly the language of a measured and emotionless clinical evaluation.
A great adolescent psychologist he may be, but – to be frank – I can do without his TV tips.
But then this week Carr-Gregg was in the newspaper again, this time in the Daily Telegraph.
There he was hurrumphing about busy parents who were “outsourcing” the parenting of their children. He was reacting to a report showing a surge in the number of girls involved in underage crime.
According to Carr-Gregg it was because “adults were becoming less and less involved in young people’s lives” leaving them to wander the street unsupervised.
It couldn’t possibly be the expanding gap between rich and poor, or the fact parents are working harder and longer than they have in decades could it Michael?
No, it’s because parents are bad people.
And that’s when it clicked. This guy is another rent-a-quote. A guy who just puts out his personal point of view, when a lot of readers I’m sure assume he’s putting out some scientifically proven viewpoint accepted in the ‘adolescent psychologist community’.
In actually fact he’s just a conservative whose only interest is perpetuating his own media profile so he can peddle his own wares. A bloody rent-a-quote.
Journalists go to him because they know he’s good for a grab, and will always support their latest sensationalist angle.
But he’s not the only one out there. So called ‘experts’ from a huge range of fields are often just good rent-a-quotes.
So beware: The views of these attention-hungry space-fillers are as valid your last cab-driver’s.
