Misleading the public
Simon Hoggart Iwas fascinated to watch the low-key struggle the other day between BBC and ITV executives, and members of the Commons culture committee. The television people said they were appalled by the chicanery revealed in various programmes — premium-rate phone-ins, the show about the Queen, for example — and would take urgent steps to make sure it never happened again. Mark Byford, the BBC's deputy director-general, seemed to be in a state of anguish. One member of the committee said afterwards that he feared he might demonstrate his contrition by slitting his wrists in front of them.
The MPs were rather sceptical, especially about the BBC's decision to make 16,000 employees attend a course to teach them how to avoid misleading the public. Andrew Neil said on The Daily Politics that this resembled a re-education camp in Pol Pot's Cambodia. Committee members wondered why anyone should need to be taught how not to mislead. You might as well — and I paraphrase — be sent on a training programme to teach you how not to steal.
Except that it is more complicated than that. Sadly, there is no line in the sand which nobody may cross, or, if there is, the line is blurred and wavy. Obviously it would be cheating for quiz contestants to be told the answers beforehand. But other devices are far more ambiguous. For example, the 'jungle' in I'm a Celebrity . . . is indeed wild and jungly. But it is also very near a main road. It is no more an example of distant, untamed nature than Box Hill. Do they tell you that it is a day's march from civilisation? No, but you are left to infer it. Recently a Newsnight item about Gordon Brown implied that he was dour and unapproachable. The various segments were spliced together out of chronological order, making the effect worse. Were the producers using technical devices to express a higher truth, or cheating both the viewers and the prime minister?
Some years ago I helped make a film about lain Duncan Smith for BBC4. We spent a few hours filming him in and around the streets of his constituency. Mostly his reception was favourable. But one woman insisted that she had sent a complaint to his office and hadn't got a reply. He said his staff must have responded. She fought back. He dug in. We included the altercation in the film because it demonstrated how IDS lacked the politician's knack of smoothing over disputes. Did it mislead the viewers? No, it was a real event. Was it a typical event? No. We had, in the modern jargon, a 'narrative'. We were telling a story, and the story was that he wouldn't be leader of the Tory party for much longer. Were we right? As it happens, yes. Would it seem unfair to IDS and his supporters? Also, yes. This is sometimes known in the trade as the 'grammar' of television, a word which implies that the public understands what's going on. But viewers often don't.
So-called reality shows are far worse. Whenever a programme like Wife Swap goes out, the papers are loud with the moans of people who think of themselves as normal complaining that they have been turned, by deft editing, into monsters. The producers claim innocence. The camera never lies! But the editing suite fibs all the time.
I was reminded of this watching British Film Forever (BBC1, Saturday), a very superior look at the best British films. We all know that movie stars are often replaced by stunt doubles — is that a cheat? No, the whole thing is fiction. What I didn't know was that Orson Welles refused to work in the real sewers of Vienna, so they had to build him some nice, clean sanitised sewers. And of course the famous scene in Brighton Rock where Pinky makes a record in a seafront machine to tell his girl friend that he's finished with her, but it gets stuck: the line 'You want me to say "I love you ... I love you ... I love you" ' is a classic lesson in how editing can be made to work.
Star Stories (Channel 4, Thursday) was a magnificently over-the-top anti-celebrity festival in which the life of Tom Cruise was performed by actors in the most unfair manner it is possible to imagine. Gordon Brown, the Queen and IDS would have realised how lucky they were. 'Scientology — wow, it all makes perfect sense!' says Cruise in one of the gentler moments. The Scientologists will of course have loathed it. Many people will have seen the famous clip in which the Panorama reporter John Sweeney lost his temper with them, and bellowed with rage. I used to work with Sweeney on the Observer, and what people don't know — this shows again how easy it is to mislead by implication or omission — is that furious bellowing was Sweeney's normal mode of address, whether arguing an important point or ask- 'ng for milk in his coffee.
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