FRENCH NOVELIST George Perec wrote the novel A Void which doesn’t have a single letter “e” on any of its 290 pages. Gilbert Adair managed the fiendish task of translating it into English in 1995. Perec was a member of Oulipo, a loose collective of tricksters and the joke is a kind of extended prank, a deliberate piece of absurdity.

I raise A Void now because the extended absurdity of writing a novel without the letter “e” reminds me of a bizarre void inside British journalism. A Void is quite impressive and funny to read, but it is also sort of annoying, because all the characters keep saying things like “a thing I cannot pinpoint is missing from our linguistics” — and your mind keeps saying, “Yes! The letter E is missing! Will you just stop messing about and notice it!”

When it comes to journalism, what is missing is something equally basic: any description or acknowledgement of journalism itself. The media can look at politics going rotten but can never see the media’s role in it.