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Evan Davis

Evan Davis
Evan Davis is an English economist, journalist, and broadcaster for the BBC. Since 2018, he has been the lead presenter of PM on BBC Radio 4.

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‎Media Tribe: Evan Davis | Peak b******t and post truth, mind the gap and a kidnapping in India on Apple Podcasts
Evan Davis is an economist, journalist, and broadcaster for the BBC. Since 2018, he has been the lead presenter of PM on BBC Radio 4. Previously Evan was the lead presenter on BBC Newsnight and before that he worked on the Today programme on BBC Radio 4. He has presented Dragons’ Den (the UK’s answe…
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Media Tribe - Evan Davis | Peak bullshit and post truth, mind the gap and a kidnapping in India
Evan Davis is an economist, journalist, and broadcaster for the BBC. Since 2018, he has been the lead presenter of PM on BBC Radio 4. Previously Evan was the lead presenter on BBC Newsnight and before that he worked on the Today programme on BBC Radio 4. He has presented Dragons’ Den (the UK’s answe…
Listen to Evan Davis on Google Podcasts

Shaunagh talks to Evan Davis

Prior to that Evan was the lead presenter on BBC Newsnight and before that he worked on the Today programme on BBC Radio 4. He has presented Dragons' Den (UK's answer to Shark Tank) since 2005.

For more on Evan

Follow Evan on Twitter and view his profile on BBC.

Episode credits

Hosted and produced by Shaunagh Connaire and edited by Ryan Ferguson.

Episode transcript

Shaunagh Connaire:

Welcome to Media Tribe. I'm Shaunagh Connaire and this is the podcast that tells the story behind the story. It's an opportunity for you and I to step into the shoes of the most extraordinary media folk who covered the issues that matter most.

Evan Davis:

Basically most news really is about distinguishing signal, real things that are signaling stuff that's happening from noise, opinion poll data it bounces up and down and you've got to pick the signal out of the noise.

Shaunagh Connaire:

This week I'm chatting to one of the UK's favorite journalists, Evan Davis. Evan has been the voice of reason on BBC Radio 4 for years now, both in his Today and PM shows and previously the voice and face of Newsnight, The BBC is flagship current affairs program. But for those of you not so familiar with Evan, let me tell you now he's a big deal in the world of journalism. So Evan, how did you get into journalism?

Evan Davis:

My journey, in many of the answers, I'll be giving you lots of questions is rather pedestrian and boring, but it does have a very important lesson in it, so it is definitely worth listening to. I went into journalism via economics. So I never really did any of the craft journalistic skill training that most good journalists have. And it means even today I have a huge great lapses in knowledge of what you're meant to do as a journalist on certain occasions. I was a professional economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies. I'd worked at the London Business School and I'd done a master's level training in economics. So that was my background and I went into the BBC because they had an economic set. It's a really fine man, peter J one time ambassador to the US, British ambassador to the US from a noble family, son of a former cabinet minister and a great guy with a long history of thinking about journalism and broadcasting, and worked with John Birt, former Director-General of the BBC.

Evan Davis:

So Peter J was a big figure and was the economic Senator of the BBC who pronounced on the nightly news, what the take on the economy bought the economic situation. But Peter was quite old school in one important regard, he really thought that no one should be working in this. He didn't have some good economics background and preferably first class degree from an old university. And so the BBC was struggling really to recruit people who met Peter J's very high requirements for what the job entailed. And actually I've been asked to do a mock interview with somebody as an economist to be an interviewee because the BBC were testing this person out as an economic broadcaster. So they just wanted to film her interviewing me for audition purposes. And I said, "I think I would be at least as good as that, if not better, rather immodestly."

Evan Davis:

And the guy said, "You should write to pizza or you should write to the BBC because I know that always on the lookout for people who actually have a professional economics background." So I actually did, and they did want somebody. And so they interviewed me and they just took me and I never went through proper journalistic training and I was an economics correspondent and that specialty and this is my line to every young aspiring journalist. The fact that I had a specialism really, really helped because it just gave me a little solid rock on which I could stand and which I knew more than most, not all, but many of the people I was working with and news editors had respect because he was someone who'd worked in economics and they obviously knew his way around it.

Evan Davis:

And I think that was fantastically useful. So I do always say to people, "Your route into journalism should be to have something you're interested in other than journalism." And that's great for two reasons. Firstly, it will give you something as a journalist to talk about that you know about and you're good at, whether it's sports or environment or religious affairs or American politics or Western European politics or mental health, there are a million topics. But the second reason to have this hinterland or something that is your specialty, is that when your journalistic career flops or when journalism is no longer a credible career path, because no one can make money and it's all whatever, you've got a plan B, you've got something else that you know about. So I do think specialism is good and that was my route into the BBC and I've been there for two and a half decades since.

Shaunagh Connaire:

Was journalism your first choice?

Evan Davis:

Well, it's funny surely, when I was at school, I was always interested in the news and interested in current affairs and in economics and politics. So there was a gang of us who used to get the train to school each day between Ashdale, Leatherhead and Dorking and we would argue and argue about politics. And I mean, we really quite precocious sort of know it all young teenagers, none of us very good at football or sports kind of people we are. We would rather argue about politics and this was at a time actually when Thatcher was coming to power, and it was quite interesting time really for the economy and changing, thinking about all of that. So, that was where I started and I think I did always want to go into that and I knew I was never going to be an academic, even though it was operating in a low grade academic sphere, I knew I was never going to be a very good academic.

Shaunagh Connaire:

Right. That surprises me honestly because I look at you and I think, "He's really, really intelligent."

Evan Davis:

No, no, no. So if you want to be a competent academic, you have to be quite a detailed person. If you want to be a journalist, it's better to be a big picture person I think. And I was much more big picture, I mean, I could spend a day or two researching something. The idea of spending three years researching something really obviously never felt very attractive. So no, I was never going to be a great academic. The best academics by the way, are the ones who are really good at the detail and really good at the big picture.

Shaunagh Connaire:

Yeah. Well that actually leads me to one, I remember you telling me probably one of the first times we ever met Evan, which I think it was back in 2012 I believe. I remember our first coffee at the BBC I was probably terrified meeting you. And then I realized you're actually pretty lovely and sound, but I remember you saying there's two kinds of journalists and one was, one who was very into the detail and chasing the story and chasing the scoop. And then there was another type of journalist, somebody who had the information there already and was the person who was able to disseminate that information. And you told me that you fall into the latter.

Evan Davis:

Yeah. So let me explain the difference. And this actually comes from Peter J my great men mentor at the BBC used to say, "The phrase comments is free in fact its sacred," he said, "It's completely the opposite way round," but you basically the facts are just lying all over the place, like on landfill. There are just so many facts that just not interesting. The only interesting thing is how you piece the facts together, the shape you put on them and the which facts you pick and what patterns you draw between them. And it's like join the dots, those joined the dots puzzles, where you out of what looks like random bits of stuff scattered on a page that are trying to find a shape. And so he says its all about finding the shape, it's not about the facts. Now, obviously it's about both, you can't have one without the other.

Evan Davis:

But now I definitely know the time I'm a kind of explainer and a retailer. And if you said to me, "Hey look, I've got this scoop, these figures they're going to be released tomorrow, I've got them tonight. And do you want to report them?" My kind of instinct is, "Well, no, they're going to be released tomorrow. Let's wait. And you know, you can publish them tomorrow. I don't need them in advance." We've just-

Shaunagh Connaire:

Oh really, how do your bosses take that?

Evan Davis:

Yeah I don't know, I'm just such a bad journalist. But I mean, I do think I am quite good at explaining and piecing them together sometimes. And what that means often as a journalist is throwing the facts away because often there are distracting facts that are actually just clogging up your understanding. And so it's about knowing which facts you can dispense with and this is more of an economic thing than in every other area. But in economics, if you're taking the latest GDP figures, there are going to be about four or five different ways you can present them. The quarter on quarter, this quarter on the year before the last year on the year before that, or the annualized quarter on quarter, there are loads of ways you can do it and where you dispense all the noise. Basically most news really is about distinguishing signal, real things that are signaling stuff that's happening from noise, opinion poll data it bounces up and down and you've got to pick the signal out of the noise.

Shaunagh Connaire:

Yeah. Well, that also brings me on to something else that I feel like you were probably ahead of the curve and calling out the bullshit pre 2016 in our inverted comments post-truth world. Is that what you mean as well?

Evan Davis:

Yeah. And I like to think that I'm going with that, and this is important going with that is a certain open-mindedness. So this is another thing about two different types of journalists. There are journalists who are not open-minded and who basically come in with a view and their journalism is about if you like promoting their values or their view, or showing that they're right about the world. I like those journalists, we need those journalists. Many of them are columnists because that's what columnists have to do is have a view, there's no point in being boring as a columnist. I like to think of myself as on the opposite side of that, which is a more open-minded, genuinely trying to be fair to both sides of an argument.

Evan Davis:

I'm not ever trying to persuade you of one side of the argument, unless I'm absolutely convinced that there's something fishy going on the other side. So open-mindedness with a degree of trying to call out the distracting rubbishy facts that are not really holding you from the other ones. I think that is what I like to think is what I bring to journalism.

Shaunagh Connaire:

Obviously you've had an amazing career and I think I first came to know you when you're at Today on the radio. And then you obviously went to Newsnight Television and you're none British listening to this and then you went back to radio. So when you were at Newsnight, your style obviously it was very different to Jeremy Paxman. I guess the more thoughtful discourse you're inclined to be a lot more thoughtful as you said, and listened to both sides, is that style, do you feel like that works in today's quite divided world?

Evan Davis:

Well, okay. So this gets at the heart of some really interesting features of my career and my journalism and lack of journalistic skill. So Newsnight, for those who don't know, it is a program that has been quite famous for its adversarial approach to interviews and to coverage of the news. So a lot of it has been around the program having some attitude and making an argument and in a sense, picking a fight with people that it does interviews with. And Jeremy Paxman, the most famous presenter of Newsnight, I mean, he was funny actually, he was a funny guy as a presenter because he was so withering in his encounter with politicians.

Evan Davis:

And there are some famous cases which you can see on YouTube and when they had to replace Jeremy Paxman, they realized that rather than just having a not very good Jeremy Paxman, it was perhaps better to try and get someone who was the opposite of Jerry Paxman, who wasn't going to try and be Jeremy Paxman. Now it was quite an instructive experience because that was definitely the reason they got me was, don't be Jeremy Paxman. Jeremy Paxman was too good to imitate.

Shaunagh Connaire:

Yeah.

Evan Davis:

And so we think was the source of arguments I was hearing that more warmth and more curiosity on the program. But the truth is that the inertia on the pro... The culture was very much a Paxman culture, and it actually did turn out to be quite difficult. And I think maybe I was always falling between both stools there, quite difficult to be in a program where the expectation of an interview is that there is one brilliant gotcha moments where a politician is left haplessly open mouth with humiliation. It's hard to move from that to a program where the presenters tried to help the politician frame their answer in order to understand their argument better.

Evan Davis:

And I don't know if that quite worked. At PM where I am now back on Radio 4, which is more of my own program. And it's much easier for me because it's a smaller operation, easy for me to shape it. I think I've gone much further in the warmth and curiosity dimension that I ever managed to do on Newsnight. And I actually think in its more extreme form, it's working better on PM than my half hearted attempts that is on Newsnight.

Shaunagh Connaire:

Would you say then Evan, are you in some ways maybe more comfortable on radios?

Evan Davis:

Oh yeah, definitely. And you're not thinking about it as much and yeah, you can be scratching your heads and not worrying about it as you do on TV.

Shaunagh Connaire:

So its really interesting you're starting off an economist and then becoming such a hugely successful journalist. During your time in LA, Evan, tell me a little bit about that. Just pre Evan Davis as the journalist, were you a wild child in LA? Did that form who you are today?

Evan Davis:

So LA was two periods of about three and a half months. These were the summers when I was at Harvard. I went to Harvard and I was studying at the Kennedy School of Government, mostly doing economics in the economics department at Harvard. And everybody said, "You're already narcissistic and superficial, you really should go to LA for an internship over the summer." And I did think that LA would be more quintessentially US somehow than Massachusetts. So I strived hard to get an internship in LA. And I got one as doing economic analysis at Southern California Edison, the electric utility. And it was the most fantastic interesting job, we're talking late '80s here. It was performing a cost benefit analysis on a smart meter way ahead of its time-

Shaunagh Connaire:

I mean, It was [crosstalk 00:16:01] very LA I must admit?

Evan Davis:

No. But I'll tell you why it was, Southern California had a problem, was in some areas that were very run down. They didn't like to send the meter readers into the homes to read the meters and then in the other extreme, because LA is full of extremist. The other extreme was that they couldn't get the meter readers into the drive to go and read the meter because it was so gated and the people were never there. So remote meter reading was seen as a really powerful and great tool. And it was a fantastic opportunity. So... Sorry, the dog is just [crosstalk 00:16:37]

Shaunagh Connaire:

I can hear Mr. Wippy it's sounds like you he wants to be interviewed too.

Evan Davis:

Liam Can you just look after the dog, the dog is getting a bit lonely. So it was a fantastic professional experience. I'd never been there, I've never had a car. I had to buy it... Sorry the dog...

Shaunagh Connaire:

It's clearly he wants to be interviewed that's totally [crosstalk 00:16:55].

Evan Davis:

The dog is barking

Speaker 3:

You have to edit this out

Shaunagh Connaire:

Ooh, I definitely won't.

Evan Davis:

Is such an attention seeker, Mr. Wippy. Anyway, so it was a fantastic personal experience. And then when I got there, I mean, I was becoming more relaxed about being gay at that point in my life, but I was still quite self conscious about it if I'm honest. And everyone in LA was just so unfazed about anything, it was life changing for me because just seeing everybody's so comfortable with it. And then within three days you've got a boyfriend there and then within another three days you've met the parents and everyone's just completely comfortable with it. It was... It just showed me what tolerance means in that respect, it's not a political tolerance. It's just an everyday tolerance that was somehow empowering. So my life never went back to the self consciousness about it that I had when I arrived. So LA really did change my life in a very big way and professionally, it was a great experience and I still very much in touch with the guy who employed me at Southern California Edison. It was a really, really interesting place to be.

Shaunagh Connaire:

I want to move on to... Is there a moment in your career that you can step back and say, "Gosh, I'm quite proud of that." I know you're a very humble person, so this might be difficult, but is there a defining moment where you actually felt quite happy with what you achieved?

Evan Davis:

Well, I'll give you one. I mean, I have made a few TV documentaries and when I say I have made them, that's the way presented to speak, but you should appreciate that. But there is a team of people who do all the work. But I have been integrally involved in a number of TV documentary, and I made a two part series about six or seven years ago called, Mind the Gap. And it was about London and its relationship to the rest of the country. And it actually brought in a populist popular form this piece of economics called agglomeration economics, which is really about this whole area of why cities seem to have a self-reinforcing economic power. And what it's all about really and LA is a brilliant example is that, if the casting people are in LA for the films and the studios in LA and the agents in LA, then the actors will go to LA and in no time you'll have an ecosystem that becomes self reinforcing.

Evan Davis:

And anyone who wants to be an acting has to have a connection or a branch office at least to LA, because basically otherwise you... And it's actually to do with face to face contact and the connection, the serendipitous knowledge exchange you get when you just have a coffee with someone or you bump into them or you... So this clustering really, really works, and agglomeration economics is about that. And I mean, I think that was actually quite a good... I think both of those programs were really good and I was very proud of them. But I know having had conversations with the then [inaudible 00:00:20:10], in the finance minister subsequently, that had an effect on slightly galvanizing the debates over it. I'm not going to overstate it, but soon after that we have this catch phrase, the Northern Powerhouse, which is probably rebuild the North of England.

Evan Davis:

And that became very much focused on trying to take some of the agglomeration economics at London and bring it to the north and create a more critical mass in the cities of the north. Which are in their total size almost the size of London, but which are little bit strung out and have no infrastructure connecting them to speak up. And which would be much more powerful as a whole and the sum of the parts. And I think that documentary, that two-part... Had, had an effect on that. And I was very proud of that. I think that was good, but I don't want to overstate.

Shaunagh Connaire:

Well, no, I remember it because it was maybe 2013 if I -

Evan Davis:

2014 I think, yeah.

Shaunagh Connaire:

2014 Was it, and I remember... I mean, I'm just thinking within media itself, the BBC of course opened up a big office in Manchester at Channel 4 obviously trying to do the same. And so it's funny in the moment that we're in now, whereas previously life goal is to live in Manhattan and in a cool apartment in the East Village. But here I am, living in a box with no guardian and funnily all of a sudden, all I crave is the countryside and living remotely with the guardian. And I wonder will COVID-19 maybe flip all of that on its head now, and maybe people will start leaving cities?

Evan Davis:

Well, that is such an interesting question. And I mean, policy has been directed to some extent and getting people into cities because environmentally for climate change purposes, cities are much more efficient. People are using public transport rather than cars. They're living in smaller properties that require less energy to heat. And so the whole thrust of policy has been to nudge people into slightly more dense accommodation in the light. And the economics has taken all the economies there and COVID is a really significant. I think stopping that in its tracks, at least to pause it while we all think, "Hang on a minute."

Evan Davis:

So the economics we don't need to go into work because people learned that probably we only need to be there for 60% of the time anyway. And density means pandemic spread more quickly and if we are in a globalized world where these things are going to spread more often and we're going to need lockdown and we really don't want it to be stuck in flats and we don't want families to be stuck in small flats. So I think there are no answers Shaunagh, but there are a lot of questions that are raised by it and the way we're living.

Shaunagh Connaire:

Is there a moment in your career that you could pinpoint as being slightly out of the ordinary?

Evan Davis:

I mean, as I say, being an economic person, most of my journalistic tails, they're not really as funny as those journalists who go out and report on what's going on in other countries. Probably the craziest moment in my journalistic career was going to India to report on... This is around 2000, reporting on the boom in high tech startups in around Bangalore and the fantastic training India was doing and that cohort of young software engineers and the like who were going to take on the world. And I think it was a great thing to do. Anyway, so we're in Bangalore doing this rather interesting economic piece, we went to Chennai and we reported on a Ford car plant there. And actually that was a very... No, it was just the tail of a car plant in Chennai and what it had done for the community and what it hadn't done for the community.

Evan Davis:

And it was a good little piece. And the story that everyone was talking around about in Bangalore was this story of an actor, Raj Kumar, pretty well known actor in India who had been kidnapped by bandits called Veerappan. I don't know, for some reason we were just intrigued in the store, it was nothing to do with what we were there for. But this is perhaps a bit where my journal instincts actually caught on and I said, "Why don't we do a piece on Kumar and veerappen." Because it seemed to say a lot about India, there were vigils outside Raj Kumar's house in Bangalore. The actual place where it happened was from his second home, a six hour drive South. So the producer guy called Daniel Pearl and-

Shaunagh Connaire:

I know him well, he used be my boss's servant.

Evan Davis:

Yeah. Daniel was actually getting a bit sick at this point, but we were desperate to persevere. So we drove down there and we just have this crazy day with the local sheriff showing us into the jungle really around India and saying, "Here's some elephant bones," and Veerappen and being allowed into Raj kumar house and his family were there and that we were from the BBC so that, "Oh yes, come on in," and this is where he was. It was just very strange and then we went back to Bangalore where there was a vigil outside his main residence. And I met a young guy and I said, "Why did you feel you wanted to be here?" And he said, "Well, I love Raj kumar." So he said, "I rolled two kilometers to get here." Now this-

Shaunagh Connaire:

He rolled.

Evan Davis:

You don't need me to tell you, "This is a very alien concept to a Western aud..." And I was like, "I'm sorry, what did you say?" And he said, "I rolled two kilometers to get here." And I was like this, "This is telling us so much more about India than all the boring stuff that I came here to report about the cultural attachments and the rituals and the complete contrast to the way we would tend to do. We don't go and roll two kilometers to show our respect to a kidnapped actor." I should say by the way, the story has a happy ending, he did come out and he was released, Raj kumar I'm glad. We just did a really interesting piece and I guess that just tells you, I don't know what the journalistic lesson is, but I think sometimes the most interesting stories are not the ones you're out looking for really, aren't they? You know this.

Evan Davis:

So they are the ones you discover on the way, and it did make me think that there is life beyond economics and it did provide the thinking that actually, what is good in journals are good stories and good characters. And so the true lesson is not get out of economics, is that look for the good stories in economics and the good characters in economics. And you see what we haven't talked about Shaunagh in this whole discussion is the fact that if you go out onto the streets of the UK, I'm not really much of a known figure except for one thing which is-

Shaunagh Connaire:

I know what yo going to say.

Evan Davis:

25 years of journalism and explaining stuff and do use like it's Dragon's Den, which is the UK equivalent of shark Tank and I'm just the presenter. I have a minute on screen at the beginning and end of the program and I do the voice over.

Shaunagh Connaire:

Does that bother you?

Evan Davis:

No, it doesn't. But what it is, is, again, it's like good stories. Every one of those encounters is a story, everybody involved in that program is a character. And it is very interesting to me that really the essence of most good entertainment and most really telling you is story and character. And that is really where most people's consumption of everything and entertainment and broadcast it is.

Shaunagh Connaire:

Huge thank you to Evan Davis. If you liked what you heard on this episode of Media Tribe, tune in next week as I'll be dropping new shows every week with all legendary folk from the industry. And if he could leave me a review and rating, that would be really appreciated. Also, get in touch on social media @Shaunagh on Twitter, or @shaunaghconnaire on Instagram and feel free to suggest new guests, right? That's it, until next week, see you then. This episode is edited by Ryan Ferguson.