Acliche has it that you should never believe anything you read in the newspapers. Well, last week's allegations that a recent Carlton documentary about Colombian drug smuggling was pretty much a work of pure fiction suggests that you can now extend this accusation to television journalism.
Yes, sometimes television fakes it. Allow me, if you will, to cite two examples in which I was personally involved. In 1982, while covering the World Cup finals in Spain, I was
having a lunchtime drink with a
couple of mates in a Scots-owned bar in Torremolinos. It was a quiet day. There were perhaps a dozen tartan-
clad fans present, perfectly decent and well-behaved supporters who sat soaking up the sunshine and watching the world go by.
Then a reporter from a well-known British television news organisation ''just happened'' to arrive. He insin-uated himself upon the fans' company, patronised them with a spot of pro-Scottish football conversation, and then bought them copious amounts of the local lager.
Pretty soon the Scots perked up; started laughing and joking and bursting into the occasional song.
All of a sudden - and out of nowhere - the reporter's camera crew turned up and started filming the lads at play. The ploy worked. Someone back at base had clearly asked for pictures of drunken Scots fans guzzling bevvy and making a lot of noise (perhaps as a counterbalance to genuine reports of the disgraceful behaviour of the English supporters in the north of Spain). But, unfortunately for the news organisation, such scenes did not exist. So the reporter had gone out and manufactured them. He should have been ashamed of himself.
Cut to a programme called Weekend World, Brian Walden's heavy-duty Sunday current affairs show of many moons ago. Here's how it worked: you pick an argument about a newsy subject and then you line up a collection of talking heads to deliver sound bites, specifically designed to reinforce said argument. Finally, you get some poor sap to appear for a showdown interview with Mr Walden. A tried-and-tested formula.
Not much of a claim to fame, I know, but I was once one of those talking heads. Weekend World was making a programme about English football hooliganism and it had chosen to use Scotland as a comparison (this was around the time that we had successfully tackled the problem by introducing legislation preventing drink being taken into stadiums).
Since I had just written a series of articles on the subject for The Herald, the Weekend World researchers decided that they wanted to interview me for
the programme. Foolishly flattered, I agreed to take part.
Now, I don't know if this is a record but it took them no fewer than 15 takes to record my contribution. This was not entirely down to my tele-
visual ineptitude (though that must have been a factor). It was only when I saw the programme the following Sunday that I realised I had been done up like a kipper. The interviewer had, quite skilfully, steered me towards saying precisely the right thing to bolster the programme's argument. And, incidentally, out of maybe 10 or 12 minutes of film, they used just 30 seconds of my interview.
So, with these two experiences in mind, you will forgive my distinct lack of surprise at the
suggestion that Carlton Television's programme, The Connection, might have been more fiction than fact. A mockumentary, if you like. The kind of thing which even Damien from Drop The Dead Donkey might have thought twice about perpetrating.
If the accusations are true (and, to be fair, the ITC jury is still out) then it is the most blatant example yet of television lying through its teeth. However, it may not be quite as simple as that. Okay, sometimes television tells lies. But perhaps it tells lies in order to illustrate the truth.
The problem with broadcast journalism is the fact that, by necessity, the ends have to justify the means. Telling the story in words is the easy bit (we do it every day in newspapers). Far more difficult, and often impossible, is the ability to tell the story in pictures. Which is why fact-based film-makers, almost as a matter of course, find themselves continually cutting corners. This, in the vernacular of the broadcast industry, is called ''reconstruction.'' And everybody does it. Always have.
So what the viewer assumes to be a documentary record of a genuine series of events may, in fact, be ''take nine'' of the same scene, ie it has been filmed time and time again until they've got it just the way they want it. Granted, there is then an element of deceit involved but, bearing in mind the nature of the medium, it is usually a benign deceit born out of necessity.
That said, however, the scale of the allegations laid against the makers of the Carlton documentary (staging key scenes in the film which purported to be an investigation into a new drug smuggling route between Colombia and the UK) should be of serious concern to all who are involved in maintaining the integrity of television journalism.
There are a few points worth making here. First, this temptation to be dishonest is inclined to flourish in today's fiercely competitive climate wherefilm-makers are fighting tooth and nail to capture lucrative commissions. There is always a temptation to make your network pitch much sexier than the reality. So, once you've won the contract to make your programme, you have to go off and make the facts fit your original concept.
Second, television journalism is showing worrying signs of heading down the same road as tabloid news-papers. Good, solid, documentary
making is no longer quite enough. Programmes not only have to be controversial (which is great) they also have to be sensational (which isn't).
Finally, there are an awful lot of young people involved in the making of factual programmes. And their considerable ambition, not to mention their confidence, sometimes appears to be in inverse proportion to their professional experience and (occasionally) their abilities.
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