Pandora's Box
Paul Johnson
It's indicative of the unhealthy fascination TV exercises over Fleet Street that the Observer's 'Pendennis' column interprets Denis Thatcher's refusal to appear on TV (he just doesn't want to) as evidence that he is 'as uninterested in the arts as ever'. What has TV got to do with the arts? Nothing, I'd say; and refusal to appear on it is prima facie evidence of sound taste and mature judgment. I am beginning to believe that TV, when it deals with serious topics, is ir- redeemably corrupt, and that it does in- calculable moral harm both to the people who watch it and, still more, to the people who appear on it. It sears and maims everything it touches. It trivialises the arts, Peace on earth not least by politicising them; and it rechl public affairs to the level of showbii,bth; foonery. Far from being educative, it 's ore great de-educator of our century: al" misconceptions, prejudices, superstitil; and downright lies are peddled on TV l,11.ach in any other section of the media. 13rItiof TV is a nursery of crime, a seminary If subversion and a hothouse of violence. a Parliament were a wise as well asc0e- sovereign body, it would enact laws co 6 ing TV to news (in the strictest sense), 51)° and entertainment.
TV poses a moral dilemma to °nit myself, who are often asked to appear stst to discuss current affairs. Should one 3'-i); the Beast by agreeing or let the battle gre)i; default by refusing? Recently, as I vela TV this column, I declined to take part in 3 the interview with a Militant spokesman, oil 'ely grounds that such programmes deliberatn ge vested with significance these odious frwiise movements of the Left, which other: could have no popular following. Last I was asked to interview Ken Livings; to who next to Arthur Scargill owes trinr"blie the media than any other figure in Pli.06 life. Why assist him further? His invita"iii, to the Sinn Fein men, who are of coursetic. to their necks in violence, was a highlY sae cessful publicity stunt designed to ad ere his political ambitions in Brent East, 'teal Irish republicans are influential in `ci- to Labour politics. The BBC is delighleA as assist such ventures; not long ago, re ..."311.,ad always to give terrorism a platform, fna. Sinn Fein swarming all over Pan° the Such media creations as Livingstone arf.cals means by which the soft-centre ra'1,,ot who dominate BBC current affairs onern. condition the public to regard extreme wing views as 'normal'. rm the All this was reason for refusing. –;so other hand, I happen to believe tha"0 to long as Livingstone is in charge and sie,,e the be in charge of the GLC, probatui worst-run major public authority in the en- tire Western world, there is not much
chance of the country electing a Labour
government — a view shared, apparently, °Y Michael Foot. So I accepted. Naturally
the programme was a waste of time. The
chairman, Richard Lindley, admitted before we went on the air that he entirely agreed with Livingstone in inviting the Sinn reiners, which did not surprise me in the least.
0f course there is nothing particularly Unusual about Lindley, an Identikit BBC current affairs operator. He is what you would expect from the Panorama stable: lire,ndy Left, superficial, above all intweight. And that, of course, is the essential characteristic of the present-day 11.8C, It lacks gravitas. There are still some heavyweights around in the Corporation: bc'hin Day for instance. But they seem to : deliberately excluded from the decision- aking process. The editor of Panorama is a " l, i,ghtweight. The Director-General of the 'C, Alasdair Milne, though a distinct i im- rovernent on his predecessor, is a ghtvveight. The chairman of the gover- s°1-s, George Howard, is a lightweight (I peak figuratively of course). His only ti atnt to distinction is that he is a chum of the Home Secretary, Willie Whitelaw, who appointed him. It is all a tragic comedown e°dr,ihe once-formidable organisation forg- .uY 'IS ferocious founder. Indeed, on the Tz of its destruction by videotape, cable- Iii; and other new consumer technology, th 813C has an air of elegiac frivolity, as c,11,g11 it were slowly sinking while the band Plays 'Nearer my Reith to Thee'. I 4'1 it difficult to believe that its proposed bev £100 million headquarters will ever be tilt, let alone occupied. Well: the end of ri he can't come a minute too soon. It is tEe ° inlY deserved, and eagerly awaited by all of,,se who care for the traditional standards British culture. F The same goes for ITV2, or Channel itnr, as our new sub-Marxist network calls flied.. Here again I find myself in a dilem- Ciai: People like me are eagerly solicited by annel Four as token rightists: it helps tialin. to maintain the pretence of 'impar- t° ItY' and 'balance'. Should one tell them tstew in their pseudo-egalitarian juice? Or inte the opportunity to breath a little sanity call what its Controller of Programmes posGuardian of the air'? Channel 144 has proved an even bigger disaster kit People like myself predicted. It is etritentious, doctrinaire, humourless, be ateUrish and, above all, unpopular. The tyes,.st' things on it are the old movies. The r,en-du the of commercial TV are griti.. ge n v at the ratings, the expense and the th:ral hopelessness of it all. Channel Four proltens to deprive them not only of their ) theiuts but of working capital to produce The programmes. i btf ne truth of the matter, as was clear long i is 9re the show got on the air, is that there .o,, stIsta.0Y not enough talent on the Left to ate In an entire channel. Four-letter words lnot a substitute for creative imagina-
tion. Black is not necessarily beautiful. Militant homosexuality and shrieking feminism are unlikely to constitute com- pulsive viewing. To provide TV entertain- ment requires more than the exhausted pharmacopoeia of radical ideology: you need elementary things like good plots, plausible dialogue, informed comment, ideas, invention; above all, wit. There is a
passage in Tom Stoppard's new play, The Real Thing, which makes this point ad- mirably. If the ITV bosses have any sense they will dump the whole concept and start again from scratch. Probably the best thing would be to turn ITV2 into an all-movie channel. That is undoubtedly what the public wants. Why not give it to them just for once?
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