‘Referendum was Project Fear versus Project Fantasy’ – Philosopher Onora O’Neill at London Speaker Series

Caroline Diehl and Onora O'Neill

Everything from American politics to the effect of social media echo chambers was covered in a lively discussion at our London Speaker Series last night.

Philosopher Professor Onora O’Neill, former Principal of Newnham College, was joined in conversation by Caroline Diehl (NC 1975), founder and Chief Executive of Media Trust, the communications charity.

It was the second of our London Speaker Series, a biannual alumnae event, and it was held at The University Women’s Club on Wednesday, November 2 2016. The first London Speaker Series event, featuring Rabbi Baroness Julia Neuberger DBE (NC 1969), was held in April.

O’Neill talked about Public trust and opinion: the part played by the media. She was interviewed by Diehl who added highly pertinent contributions from her sphere of expertise. Diehl has received an MBE for services to the media industry and has more than 20 years of experience working with charities to enhance their communications.

On politics and the 2016 referendum held about whether the UK should remain a member of the EU, O’Neill said: “Crowd sourcing to buy a saucepan works as people writing the online reviews have direct experience, but crowd sourcing one’s opinions in the case of Brexit or the ghastly American presidential campaign is not such a good idea.

“When it comes to the referendum, we had Project Fear on one side and Project Fantasy on the other.”

The respected academic combines writing on political philosophy and ethics and justice with a range of public activities.

At the event she talked about the level of public trust offered to teachers, the police and medical staff. She explained that for generations people have said they do not trust journalists or politicians and that has not changed.

She added: “Organisations imagine transparency is a panacea as it has become terribly fashionable, but it has limited value if people don’t know how to properly interpret the complex information before them.”

She also outlined her concerns about the influence of opinion polls and social media echo chambers.

She said: “The coverage of opinion polls always cites the extremes. And how we combat the negative effect of social media echo chambers is one of the big question’s society faces.”

More than 70 alumnae attended the talk and O’Neill fielded questions from a judge, a detective constable and a former journalist who were all in the audience.

O’Neill has been a crossbench member of the House of Lords since 2000, she chaired the UK’s Equality and Human Rights Commission from 2012-2016, and she is currently on the boards of the Medical Research Council and the Banking Standards Review.

The audience listened intently to her view of the importance of the freedom of the press and she explained the impact of Leveson Inquiry, which looked at the culture, practices and ethics of the British press, the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO), and she talked about the purpose of Impress, the independent press regulator which O’Neill described as ‘more of an auditor’.

She concluded by saying: “We don’t want more trust, we want more trustworthiness and more well directed trust.”

Professor Dame Carol Black, Principal of Newnham College, thanked O’Neill at the end of the event for ‘always bringing some sense to difficult subjects’.

The third London Speaker Series event will be held in spring 2017.