ANOTHER VOICE

Those who work in television lie to each other, lie to the people who go on it, and lie to the viewer

MATTHEW PARRIS

So far from tiptoeing carefully into the matter of faked documents, Panorama, Terry Venables and the Princess of Wales, we tiptoe not at all. The Mail on Sunday could be wrong in its allegations against the BBC. I know nothing, offer no commentary and hope Panorama will be exonerated. What, however, I hope might not be extin- guished is a new spirit of critical vigilance towards standards in television journalism.

Television lies. All television lies. It lies persistently, instinctively and by habit. Everyone involved lies. A culture of men- dacity surrounds the medium, and those who work there live it, breathe it and pros- per by it. Though we have hounded politi- cians into contempt, pilloried the owner- ship of the press and demonised the directors of industry, we have never really subjected television to the cold and sneer- ing examination it metes out to its own vic- tims. We should. I know of no area of pub- lic life — no, not even politics — more saturated by professional cynicism.

If you want a word which takes you to the core of it, I would offer 'rigged'. Almost everything on television is rigged. The instinct to fake runs evenly through the industry, from the tabloid to the quality end. At every level lies a horror of losing control of where a programme, an argument, even a conversation, is going. In television the impromptu is a sort of nightmare, to be avoided at all costs. To adapt that phrase of John Birt's, there is a bias against the open- ended. For technical reasons there has to be.

Yet television requires an appearance of spontaneity. The viewer would feel cheated if he realised that the ebb and flow of sofa- based chat had been scripted, or the con- clusion of a programme of high-minded political inquiry decided upon before the programme-makers began it. If, then, an impression of off-the-cuffery is required, TV producers must fake it, and they do. It is this combination of concealed rigging with the viewer's impression that he is see- ing things as they are, with his own eyes, which makes television so dangerous.

At the trashy end of the market I will not linger. Maybe here the public expect to be cheated, though one raises an eyebrow at the widespread assumption that when any fool can see that you're cheating, it isn't cheating. Does it matter, shrugs your Blind Date scriptwriter, that a hundred thousand old ladies don't realise the questions and answers are not impromptu? Does it matter if celebrities' agents map out the questions in advance? Does it matter that the surprise in the 'surprise' show is no surprise; that the wit in the 'witty banter' show was rehearsed? Does it matter that the presen- ter is not (as it seems) roving the audience at random with microphone, but targeting pre-selected guests? Television profession- als were quick to snipe when during the last election John Major's impromptu gather- ings with voters were rigged in this way.

Does it matter that, though the bird you see in long-shot in a documentary about Andean birds was photographed in the Andes, the close-up is a different bird, in a zoo? And if the protesting student was shaking his fist a moment ago and you ask him to repeat it, now, for the cameras, does it matter? Here we approach the nub. For just as a bent copper protests that the accused was guilty even if the evidence was forged, so the TV professional will assure you (and, in lonely moments, himself) that to produce a picture which is essentially true, one must resort to artifice.

Of course one must. The whole medium is rooted in artifice, like the painter's medium or the puppeteer's, for television is just another trick of the eye. The lights must be hidden and the cameraman kept out of frame. The props supporting the set, the fact that Big Ben through the window is only a photograph, and the book-lined shelf behind the presenter does not hold real books, must be concealed. The Autocue machine must be concealed, so the presenter can pretend he is not reading, pretend he understands, that the words are his. They are not. The earpiece in his ear must be hidden so he can pretend he is in control. He is not. And so artifice, and the tolerance of arti- fice, spreads — seeps — upwards from the technical base on which the whole enter- prise rests. If it is not dishonest (and undoubtedly it is not) for your television weatherman to point at a map of Britain which only seems to be there but is actually a separate projection, then surely it is not dishonest (probably it is not) for the pre- senter to seem to be speaking from the heart when in reality she is reading from a small reflective glass in front of the camera lens. In which case, is it dishonest (arguably it is not) for the presenter to pretend to an expertise which is actually supplied by her researcher?

In which case, is it dishonest for the pre- senter to imply that the pundit in the chair is free to offer any opinion, when the truth is that 50 pundits were telephoned but only the fellow prepared to offer the requisite opinion was invited? I remember on Week- end World (for I do not exclude my own conduct from these strictures) when we `interviewed' one pundit 34 times before we got him to say what we wanted.

Thus and imperceptibly the culture of mendacity spreads. If you have the docu- ment, but smudged, why not retype it for the camera? If you lack the document but do know what was in it, why not forge it? If your researcher is pretty damn sure he knows what happened but was not there to film it . . . well, why not stage it for the camera, placing the word 'reconstruction' in small letters on the screen?

There must be a picture, you see: always a picture. Don't just say 'Boeing 747', show a Boeing 747 — oh, any Boeing 747; archives will have one. Archives don't? Well, leave the Boeing 747 out, change the script. Thus and imperceptibly the culture of contempt for the argument spreads.

All of us who work with television — we who do the 'walk:les' (walking up the stairs for the camera so the programme has a pic- ture to show while they say your name) and we who do the 'talkies' (talking about the weather while the camera records your pun- dit nodding her head) ... yes, we sense it. In our small brushes with the medium we sense the lowering of personal standards which comes with low institutional standards.

We have learned that when the TV researcher telephones to 'pick your brains', she is lying. Her brief is to discover whether you will say what her producer wants you to say. We have learned that when she says they want you for the programme she is lying: they want you on standby in case they can't get anyone better. We have learned that when she says you are on at 11 a.m., she is lying: you are on at 11.45 but they want guests earlier. Lying is routine in tele- vision. They lie to each other, they lie to you, and they will lie to the viewer.

We know all this in print journalism but we do not say it too often or too loud. We know we need to be on television ourselves occasionally, to keep up our profiles. We know we have trickeries and slovenliness of our own to hide. We need each other, tele- vision and Fleet Street, so why start a war? There will be no war, and that's a shame.

Matthew Parris is parliamentary sketchwriter of the Times.