We are invited, this fine morning, to feel superior. As we sip our
coffee and munch on our toast, we're presented with a side-dish of
superiority, courtesy of our regular television channel's news readers.
We're invited to join and laugh with them at the hapless loser antics
of, well, just about anyone and anybody who dares to raise their head
above the parapet and be noticeable, everyone, that is, except for them
and, of course, since we're implicitly invited to join, we ourselves.
How nice to wake up and feel superior to those hapless others. How good
life can be. That's on this TV channel, anyway. Let's watch together in
a little more detail. I'll be mother.
Recently it's become the fashion for news readers who are doing the pop
segment to openly deride the rock stars and musicians they're discussing.
God knows why they think news readers are superior. I recently saw a
very creditable singing effort from someone who had been a contender in
one of these staged talent TV shows, where the winners are voted for by
the public and are granted seemingly wondrous record deals as a
consequence. This girl had come second and was pictured in head shot
doing a very creditable vocal into a mike. "She wasn't the winner"
advised one newsreader. "I'm not surprised, singing like that" chortled
her male companion, and off go the pair, together with the regular music
scene commentator, into peals of laughter at the feeble efforts of the
hapless and it must be said, slightly tubby chanteuse.
She sang great, actually. She was bang on. She was right on the money.
She hit the spot. I'm a trained singer and I've done a little singing
myself and I knew. She was good, and I knew and I imagine she knew too.
Who didn't seem to know were the news readers and their, er, specialist
music correspondent. What they'd been listening to was a dry vocal, the
girl's naked voice before it had been treated with several thousand
pounds worth of special effects in a studio costing a conservative few
million pounds by a producer whose income a Greek chorus of news readers
couldn't calculate on all their combined toes and fingers. In other
words, this supposedly hapless, loser wannabe dreamer girlie singer
sounded just like everyone does before it gets the studio magic added,
the same way I do, the same way you do, the same way any singer you
could name would if they were just singing dry into a microphone.
Now years ago, they might have got away with this. We'd all have
chortled merrily away, none the wiser. Tuned in the next day for more,
probably. Which is the point of the exercise. These days, though, given
how relatively cheap and easy it is to have a home computer-based
studio, more and more people will be aware of this and, along with me,
be insulted by the suggestion that they don't.
It's ignorant not to know this and it's a greater ignorance to display
this on television and a greater ignorance still to assume that your
audience/viewers are similarly as ignorant and thus will feel
comfortingly encouraged to chortle right along with you.
I see behaviour like this directed at the viewer - me - and I'm
insulted. And it seems to be all over the shop. I recently watched a TV
presenter interview a heavyweight economist about the economic
conditions in a country where a school was taken over by terrorists. "In
order to understand this kind of behaviour, you have to look at the
economic conditions typically prevalent in the countries where it
surfaces", says the economist, drawing breath to - presumably - do just
that. At this point the interview promptly accused him of supporting
terrorism, precipitating what looked like an imminent heart-attack on
the part of the economist.
Now there is a clear distinction between being a supporter of terrorism,
or even an apologist for terrorism, and observing, being expert in your
field, that similar economic conditions are often in place before the
rise of terrorism and going on TV in your official capacity to make
mention of them. I don't need that explaining to me - do you?
In this case, the interviewer apparently believed his audience incapable
of making the distinction. Again, I was insulted, myself. Since the
economist almost went into apoplexy I gather he wasn't too pleased either.
Being fed up with seeing scenes like the ones I describe above mean I
don't watch a lot of breakfast TV any more. I know well the saying that
no-one ever went broke by under-estimating the intelligence of the
public. That was before we had the internet, and access to it in every
living room. This is the information age, and oh yes, this just in - you
can't treat your audience as if they're ignorant any more. If you do,
they won't be your audience for too much longer, and hey - how dumb is that?
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