Are you shouting at the news? 22 August, 2008
Radio 4’s Political Animal recently featured a fantastic rant from Chris Addison on the banality of television news.
There is a tremendous lack of political engagement that we now feel in our county. And conventional wisdom has it that this is to be laid at the door of politicians. We’re not attracted to politicians; we find them cavilling and tedious and lying and so we don’t like politics. But I think that view hugely lets off the hook a whole bunch of other people who are massively responsible, and that is the people who make and broadcast television news. Because television news has become so insulting to the intelligence that if you are not shouting at the television news I believe you should medically be declared dead! I genuinely think an official way of telling if you are alive or not should be turning the news on….
They just think we’re idiots… Tonight with Trevor Mcdonald … it’s got incedental music on it! You’re a current affairs programme! Incedental music is designed to tell us how to feel. So there’ll be a voiceover saying ‘… And at the age of twelve James contracted lukemia …’ And underneath there’ll be Albenoni going ‘nah nah nuh nere’. You think, ‘Oh that’s lucky because for a minute there I was wondering which way to go on little Jim’s lukemia; turns out it’s a bad thing.’
The news editors, on one hand they think we’re idiots and on the other hand they seem to be desperate to know what we think about things. Stop asking us to e-mail the news. I don’t give a shit what George from Grimsby thinks about the emerging Asian economies.
Spot on! The BBC’s coverage of the recently announced crime figures had me bellowing at the box. With absolutely no hint of self knowledge or even any further analysis George Alagiah asked why, when recorded crime has fallen by 10 percent this year, is there such a mismatch between the public’s perception (that it is rising) and the statistical reports? Hmmm. I wonder? If people’s direct experience of crime is that it’s falling where on earth could they be getting the idea that it’s on the increase? The only place where the BBC even alludes to this is in the third paragraph of an article on their website:
While we in the national media may have been highlighting brutal knife slayings, the reality for most parts of England and Wales is completely different.
That’s the real story; sloppy, sensationalist journalism, but for some reason the mainstream media aren’t shouting about it.