NCIS vs 24: the workplace in pop culture

I wasn't feeling well over the weekend, and spent a lot of time in front of the TV, trying to stave off a cold. Two programmes caught my attention for the same reason: their depiction of the workplace.

NCIS is an american show about a Naval Criminal Intelligence unit solving crimes involving sailors. It isn't very good. What is interesting about it, though, is the way the leader of the team, Gibbs, bullies and intimidates his staff. The writers probably think they are showing him as a strong leader, but to me he comes over as rude, aggressive and hectoring. He clips his staff behind the ear. He tells them he will fire them for the most minor infractions. He never gives them a break. In short, he's the kind of arsehole you would never want to work for. And the worst thing about this program is that it encourages people who behave that way at work to think that it's OK. And I bet it is net negative for Navy recruitment.

24 in contrast, although it is deeply unrealistic in many ways, shows workplace conflicts with some measure of realism. It portrays much more nuanced inter-personal relations. The office is political, and people bear grudges and have their own agendas, but somehow they manage to work together, more or less. In 24's CTU people with different points of view cooperate, imperfectly but adequately: this is how real organisations work. Command and control is dead: long live the adaptive organisation.

The Veiled Rules of this Game called Society

The current furore over the niqab is an interesting test for the methodology suggested in the last post.

Let's start with the facts. There are a significant number of British muslims, some of whom live in communities in our major cities. Relations between these communities and their neighbours are not without issues, with some misunderstanding and hostility on both sides.

Jack Straw suggests that the wearing of the niqab (the full veil for women) is bad for community relations. It is difficult to see how this statement can raise much controversy. While one might argue about whether it is right for some people to be troubled by the niqab, it is certainly the case that they are.

Now for the opinion. Straw goes on to suggest that, for this reason, he asks women to remove their veils during meetings. Clearly here we have to balance a person's right to wear what they choose, their religious sensibilities and so on,--against the impact of such a separate form of dress on community relations. Whatever you think about the answer to that question, it is difficult to argue that there is nothing to debate here. Of course it might be bad for society to have that debate - that's a different question. But at least this way of thinking concentrates on the metric - how we measure the value of the different outcomes - rather than other, less pertinent parts of the debate.

Whatever happened to news and comment?

Sometimes you find something that, in context, might not seem too strange, but when you step back and think about it, is genuinely odd. (Yes, that really is a ten foot copper eggcup in a late medieval church, by the way.) We are so used to the mixture of news and comment that passes for journalism these days that we don't object. But when you find a really egregious example, it can bring you up short.


I was forwarded something like that today: it was a virulently anti-London Olympics piece. Now, as it happens, I think having the Olympics in London is a plan that has never been properly validated, is likely to go seriously wrong, and will cost Londoners a lot of money. But that's an opinion. What really annoyed me about this supposed news item was the way it moved seemlessly from (carefully chosen) facts about the Barcelona, Athens etc. Games to pure conjecture about London and back again. The writer attributed motives to various parties including property developers and the mayor that not only were pure surmise, they were also deeply implausible. (I honestly don't believe Ken is the natural leader of a capitalist cabal: do you?) The fact that I agreed with the conclusion is irrelevant: it was a really bad piece of journalism.

A commentator needs to see the plays clearly before he or she can understand how the game works. Then they might suggest changes to the rules to meet their views of a what a better outcome is. But mixing the opinion in with the analysis is bound to lead to muddied thinking. So journalists, please, try to keep that old fashioned news/comment separation in place.