GREAT BRITISH FAKE-OFF
There’s a lot of noise going on these days about so-called
‘fake news’. It’s one of those self-satisfied mantras like ‘conspiracy theory’
that are simply designed to silence alternative opinion.
A little thought reveals the fact that almost everything
that gets done begins with a conspiracy, whether it be planning the shopping
list or an advertising campaign.
What might take a bit more recognition is that all news is
fake news. It is always delivered with an opinion or a stress, it is subject to
multiple filters, from its likely impact to available space and availability of
pictorial material.
A newspaper that simply reported everything new that
happened in a single county would come in a dozen Britannica-sized volumes
daily, so even News 24 simply repeats the same few stories with magazine style
puff to keep them apart.
Radio and newspapers can’t really give you much subjective
reality on what’s going on because they can’t ‘show’ it to you like television
can. When you watch something on television, you think you actually saw it, but
all you saw - no matter who the manipulator might have been - was a manipulated
image with a slanted (even if only as a cause of limited information)
commentary.
The core business of television is to give the impression
that something that happened didn’t and something that didn’t happen did.
This has never been otherwise. It’s as true in wildlife
programmes in which mountains of archive footage are connected to form a
narrative about an iguana being chased by snakes and spectacular visuals are
used to mask the subliminal repetition of doubtful scientific key words, as it
is in Panorama and other ‘start off with an angle and then make it appear to be
true’ ‘documentaries’.
When I was working as a TV reviewer, I was told a story that
might not be true either, but is certainly possible.
There was a lot going on and only the rookiest rookie
reporter was in the studio. A message came to say that Mother Thatcher was
about to manifest herself outside Number 10 and whinge an important
announcement. There was no one else to go, so the rookie was put together with
the second deputy standby crew and despatched to the locus in quo.
Thatcher pronounced and the crew gave the thumbs up that all
words of wisdom had been duly recorded along with a decent close up smudge of
the glorious wossname.
The iron one retreated to hearth, Dennis and home and the
various media types were on their phones or skulking somewhere with a decent
and recognisable background to do their pieces to camera.
No fool, our rookie took the opportunity to pose a searching
question to which Mrs T had just provided the response. Back at the studio, the
question was cut and pasted to the beginning, so that the impression was that
what he or she had asked had been the first question to which she had ever
given a straight answer.
Simple, basic, convincing and completely false.
The individual probably never got to do anything like that
again. Normally dealings with the high and the mighty are done by a select few
with the right ‘credentials’ issued to them by the great and the good, and the
ever present threat of withdrawal following any indiscretions. Being barred
from the gin palace is not a career booster for a political newshound.
Faking the news comes naturally to a medium that grew out of
illusion. It fakes history, it fakes documentaries, it even had to do retakes
on Surprise, Surprise when the victims weren’t surprised enough.
It cuts down our perception until we have only sound and
vision - the sound often dubbed, and the vision kept within a frame. In most
drama and large-scale production - even quiz shows and soaps - there are more
people doing more things outside the purview of the chosen camera than there
are in front of it.
In some footage from a couple of years ago that most
broadcasters other than the BBC admitted was fake, the reporter in the shot was
saying more shooting was being heard from somewhere off in the desert, while,
out of shot, a geezer with a ghetto blaster was providing the sounds.
It’s all too easy, and the more material is syndicated, the
more the winning story is the cheapest and most easily available. Turkish TV
does a good line in chroma-key desert events.
I love television, even in its present dotage.
I thoroughly enjoy the ability to choose when and what I
watch.
