DEMOS

This is perhaps a side-effect of the modern phenomenon of the televised debate. Inevitably, only a small proportion of people will actually watch; the reality of the debate is then mediated through a highly partisan game of Chinese whispers by the media before reaching the large proportion of people who are interested.

What makes a debate particularly open to loss in translation is its interactive nature, which corresponds poorly with the structures of televised soundbites. To quote one person's point without another's response, for example, entirely changes the meaning of the debate; in an argument, context is all.

I watched the first debate between George W Bush and Al Gore in Virginia, as part of 'debate watch' - a programme run in colleges around the US, with students reacting to and discussing the debates, their responses gathered, analysed and filed for later use. My reaction, and the reaction of pretty much everyone there, was that Bush had performed very badly: looking like a rabbit caught in the headlights, he had made little sense, contradicted himself, and failed to engage with Gore in any meaningful way.

The immediate response of the anchors on the main news channels was similar: although cautious, their own initial responses indicated that Bush had come out the loser. But then something strange happened. As various pundits and analysts started to feed in, and as the two campaign teams entered the fray, everything changed. Slowly, a picture emerged. Bush had done 'far better than expected'; Gore, on the other hand, had been 'arrogant'. Backed by a few good quotes from the former, and a few images of the latter shaking his head and sighing, the news agenda shifted through a seamless process of double-think to a conclusion opposite to that from which it had started.

A day later, a mediated version of the debate had developed which had far more force than the reality to which it bore so little resemblance; and it was through this version only that most voters could engage with the debate they never saw.

No volte-face on such a grand scale has occurred - or is likely to occur - with the Hutton enquiry. But it is interesting to read coverage of Michael Howard's performance in particular. Take one example. Jon Silverman, on the BBC website, refers to the acknowledgement in the report that "it can't be ruled out that the chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, John Scarlett, and his officials were 'subconsciously influenced' by Number 10's desire for as strong a case as possible, compatible with the intelligence, to be made in the dossier."

He then goes on to say: "With his forensic background, the opposition leader, Michael Howard, picked out this comment in the Commons debate".

From which one might assume that Michael Howard had scored an unexpected and impressive hit on the Prime Minister. What he doesn't mention, as it happens, was that exactly the same point had been picked up by the PM as well, in his own speech, ten minutes earlier; that he had spoken about it at some length; and had gone on to say that the report very specifically stated that there was no question of wrong-doing. Or that he responded once again after the Leader of the Opposition's speech.

None of these apparently salient features of the argument have cropped up in any of the reporting I've read or seen so far. Not because of any particular anti-Blair bias, but because argument - unfortunately - is almost impossible to translate accurately into the narrative of journalism.