Protz: Breaking the silence

Does anyone remember television newsreader Martyn Lewis? He gave up the job in 1999 because he was fed up with reading bad news. He said he was never given good news to read.

That's the nature of the modern media beast. We live in a 24-hour, rolling-news society, with stations battling for supremacy and market share, seeking sensation rather than information to steal a march on their rivals.

Last week I wrote about the media blackout that followed the Society of Independent Brewers' (Siba) report showing its members' sales increasing by an average of close to 11%.

Fifteen or 20 years ago, that would have made a good news story. It might even have made the "And finally..." slot on News at Ten.

But not any more. Beer and pubs are off the news agenda, except when they feed the media's frenzy about binge drinking.

As a journalist who writes about beer and pubs, I know the problem at first hand. If I send ideas for beer-related features to national newspapers all I hear is the sound of silence.

The Good Beer Guide 2008 includes a major piece on 10 pubs that feature in all its 35 editions.

A remarkable achievement, you might think, and worthy of media attention. Years ago, the media would have recorded talks with the publicans running the pubs and interviewed long-standing customers of each establishment.

How much coverage did that story get? Zilch. But when the rival Good Pub Guide attacked "over-priced pub food", it received widespread media support. Bad news about pubs guarantees air-time.

Nobody in their right mind would deny that binge drinking is problematic.

Binge drinking​

Apart from the chaos such activity causes, the waste of police and hospital time and impact on those who drink to excess, it is also doing terrible damage to the pub trade and brewing industry.

Almost on a daily basis, pundits on news channels lay the blame for the problem at the door of "24-hour licensing".

Few talk about the excessively easy availability of cheap alcohol in supermarkets and corner shops, where it is often bought by adults who hand it on to under-age drinkers.

The TV experts seem unaware that licensees who keep disorderly houses or sell alcohol to people under the legal age can lose their licences or even go to prison.

Occasionally common sense prevails. Last Friday, BBC2's Newsnight devoted almost the entire programme to a discussion of the general problem of bad behaviour by young people.

It started with the usual distressing but over-familiar images of young drinkers causing mayhem on the streets.

But it then cut to a studio discussion that included Ken Jones, Chief Constable of Sussex and president of the Association of Chief Police Officers.

Mr Jones didn't follow in the footsteps of some chief constables, who have delighted the panting media with calls for an increase in the legal drinking age to 21 years or hefty increases in alcohol duty.

Alcopops​

He laid the blame fairly and squarely on the introduction of alcopops in the 1990s. These, he said, have hooked young people on strong drink and changed an entire generation's behaviour.

This point was underlined by a sad radio interview a few days earlier with a girl of 14 who has a serious drink problem and liver damage.

She's been drinking heavily since she was 12 and her favourite tipple is alcopops. "They taste like a fizzy fruit drink," she said.

One of the boys who kicked Gary Newlove to death in Warrington had drunk about eight cans of strong cider topped up with canned lager. The booze came from an off-trade outlet.

This problem needs to be tackled at source. Stop making and selling alcopops, for a start.

But, above all, tackle the supermarkets' greed and power. Their massively-discounted booze lies at the root of the problem - and it needs a Government with backbone to take them on.

For more Protz visit www.beer-pages.com​.