Kate Hawkesby: Are social media witch hunts out of touch with the mainstream?

I was very pleased to see that the second series of ‘’Clarkson’s Farm” has broken Amazon viewing records to become one of the most watched shows in the UK. 

The very same UK that we heard was cancelling Clarkson due to his comments about Meghan Markle. So I regard this as, one, smart viewership by people drawn to quality programming, and two, a figurative flick of the bird to cancel culture. 

The show is brilliant. It‘s beautifully shot, extremely well put together, cleverly scripted (by Jeremy Clarkson himself) and shows the bureaucratic bungling nightmare of local councils. It shines a light on the plight of farmers in general and is just wonderful family-friendly enjoyable content. My only complaint about it is there are not enough episodes for each season. 

So how is it possible that off the back of a poorly worded column about Meghan Markle and calls for Clarkson’s sacking, that rumours abounded of his demise? Amazon would not be continuing with him, media told us, ITV would most likely dump him as well, it was reported. Clarkson was persona non grata, vilified, cancelled, gotten rid of, all but toast. 

Except none of that happened. Instead, he put out a superb second series of his farming show and what do you know? It got watched in record numbers; it broke records and got more eyeballs than Love Island and the Harry Styles-heavy Brit Awards. Now that’s saying something. 

So what is it saying? Well apart from a good chunk of the UK clearly knowing what a quality TV show looks like, it says to me that mainstream media’s obsession with the vilification and trolling happening on social media is misguided and out of touch. Journalism these days, so often under the guise of neutrality, runs agenda-driven stories about people either they don’t like, or who’re getting a pile on, on social media. 

Mainstream media jumps in on this with headlines about that person being 'under fire’ and what they mean by that is that the perpetually bored and the idle, with too much time on their hands, have weighed in or shared their views on someone they hate. And then spread that to some more people who jump in and a few more, and before you know it there’s a petition this person should be cancelled. 

Cancel culture is pretty much all social media does these days, unless you’re an influencer monetizing yourself, then the bulk of it is just whining. Misery loves company. It’s free and easy, and it often gets results (just ask Roald Dahl's family). 

The virtual pile-on means all those who threw stones from the comfort of their Lazy Boy can go away feeling better about themselves. Even though they may be contributing nothing at all other than bitter commentary. And even though a creative putting content out into the world may be canned because of it. 

God forbid we have a diverse range of opinions or views or that anyone dares not participate in the group think of social and now sadly mainstream, media. And by the way, social media only started making it into mainstream media when newsrooms got lazy and instead of looking for stories to break themselves, decided to read Twitter or Facebook instead and just report on what trolls were saying there.

So a win for Clarkson, a third series is already underway, and it’s a win for those of us who know that just trying to cancel people, is a cop-out.

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