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.

Flicking through the notebooks I noticed a sketch for a new Open University logo that I drew just before I left in 2003. The Marketing department were beginning to ‘revitalise the brand’ with Wolff Olins, and the whole identity was destined to change. (I know that a brand is about much more than the logo – imagery, ‘voice’, colour, type, layout, experience all work together to create the most successful ones – but the logo is high impact and remains consistent across media.)

OU logos past, possible and present

I wanted to retain the familiarity of the hole-in-the-shield mark, but soften it a little and make it more approachable than the old corporate look. I tried to use the shield to frame what I believe is at the heart of the OU – people; the transformational effect that open access to learning has on people’s lives and the passion education ignites in its students.

The new OU logo wouldn’t look out of place in this rogue’s gallery

You can make up your own mind as to how successful I was, but I’d ask you to contrast my sketch with the Wolff Olins version. Yes, the University was desperate to appear more modern and shrug off its 1970’s ‘housewife university’ tag, but the result is sterile; a pastiche trying too hard to be cool. They were ahead of the curve with the visuals (anticipating the Web 2.0 look, or possibly ripping off Apple depending on your viewpoint) but being fashionable is a difficult game to play. Too cutting edge and you risk appearing silly when things move on. Just look at ‘Corporate World meet Web 2.0′ on Flickr (originally uploaded by gtmcknight). That’s a joke. Unfortunately for the OU, their ‘revitalised’ logo is for real.

Me to Number 1 Daughter: What colour are your eyes?
Number 1 Daughter: Blue.
Me: What colour are mummy’s eyes?
N1D: Brown.
Me: What colour are daddy’s eyes?
N1D: Red.

There were quite a few questions (the session lasted around half an hour), many accompanied by response cards with the various options available for each question. And to add that twenty-first-century touch to the experience, all my answers were noted down in a custom bit of software on a small Tablet PC.

A lot of it was standard fare: ‘What do you think of the following statements?’, ‘Have you ever done x before?’, but I thought some of the questions were definitely suspect. For example, from memory: ‘What do you think are the main things people look for when choosing a school for their child?’. Note that it wasn’t ‘What are the main things you look for when choosing a school for your child?’. It’s a subtle, but important difference. The first version is designed to elicit a specific set of responses drawn from ‘popular’ influences. Think Daily Mail headlines, school league tables etc. It’s a question looking to reinforce known answers and it’s bad practice.

So, even though it’s people like me participating in these surveys, poor question design means our answers aren’t always what we want them to be.