Lesley Riddoch: TV fails to deliver the bigger picture

Published on Friday 11 March 2011 13:31

Educated viewers demand more than just dramatic images to inform their view of world events

SO THE new Chairman of the BBC Trust does not watch TV. The former Conservative Party chairman and Governor of Hong Kong told the Culture Select Committee that he "hardly watches television"; saw EastEnders "longer ago than (my) last McDonald's" and thinks a celebrity is "somebody I've never heard of." "I watch programmes you'd expect somebody of my background to (watch). That's who I am: I'm 66, white and reasonably well educated" - a deliberate riposte to former BBC boss Greg Dyke who famously claimed the BBC was "hideously white."

You have to admire a man so resolutely determined not to be down with the kids - nor the 25,000 BBC staff who remember Dyke as a brilliant, hands-on boss.

Will hands-off Patten re-energise the BBC? Can Aunty be championed by a man who doesn't sample its main product? Certainly, the man who stood up to Margaret Thatcher and the Chinese government will not easily be intimidated by the Coalition Government, BBC management or broadcasting unions.

Being independent-minded is one thing - being semi-detached is another.

Can a BBC boss possibly defend the Corporation's interests if he doesn't watch or rate its TV output?

Indeed, why does a reasonably educated 66-year-old not watch BBC TV - is it irretrievably dumbed down or is he irretrievably elitist? Patten suggests he is not alone - indeed 55-70 year-olds are the fastest growing demographic. So does his implicit attack on BBC standards not matter?

That may seem a stupid question to ask in the wake of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami.

BBC TV News has excelled at relaying graphic images of the massive, steady, crushing 30 foot-high wave as it ploughed across land and sea - providing horrific but compulsive viewing.

After a few hours though, the terrible pictures provoked some terrible worries.

Who did not automatically think "Chernobyl" the moment newsreaders first revealed nuclear power stations were located in the devastated earthquake epicentre early on Friday morning?

And yet I saw no attempt to discuss the world's worst fear until the explosion at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant on Saturday morning.

BBC News 24 newsreaders then delivered a string of contradictory statements like employees of Japanese State TV. Yes - there here had been an explosion at the nuclear power plant, a cloud of radioactive steam released into the atmosphere and an exclusion zone created … but no, there was no cause for concern.Really?

Any reasonably educated viewer then had a new set of questions.

"How far does radiation travel? Why should we believe authorities whose first attempt to contain damage failed? How can any outcome be certain in such unprecedented and awful circumstances? Why is such an obvious "don't panic" message being delivered by the BBC? And why should viewers stay tuned to a station which won't ask the obvious and legitimate questions on everyone's mind?

Was Chris Patten still watching?

I wasn't.

If BBC newsreaders were "reasonably well educated viewers", they too would have switched off and gone online to pick up eye witness commentaries on Twitter; exchanges with friends of Japanese friends on Facebook and early expert newspaper commentary on websites, regarding a nuclear accident which could yet shake our world - and the growing international consensus behind nuclear energy as a safe way to tackle climate change.

Au contraire, by Saturday evening a Radio 4 news bulletin broadcast the un-challenged views of a nuclear security expert - I didn't catch his name - claiming this had been nuclear power's finest hour because the Fukushima plant was intact after nature's worst attack.

By Sunday the BBC had stepped back from such incredible complacency, partly because Yukio Edano, Japan's chief government spokesman, admitted a "significant chance" that radioactive fuel rods had partially melted - but also because the press had been given their turn to boldly go where timorous TV news had feared to tread.

At the time of writing no-one knows if the Fukushima nuclear plant is in part-meltdown or not. No-one knows if that will halt other nuclear programmes or if tectonically inert places like most of Europe will consider themselves immune.

The only certainty is the terrible human tragedy, the rising death toll and the knowledge that Japan will be forever altered. Amidst such suffering it may seem wrong and tasteless to be over-concerned with the part of the story that affects us.

But the world has been here before. Chernobyl, Three Mile Island - even the shaft at Dounreay - almost all bad nuclear news has been covered up. Sceptical and urgent questioning on Friday would have been perfectly legitimate.

Instead BBC TV News delivered the premature assurance that all was well.

I've no idea if this is why news-junkie Chris Patten doesn't watch BBC TV - it's certainly why I don't.

Increasingly TV is a medium which delivers the wow but not the why. TV stations compete to be first with sensational pictures viewers want to see - not first to ask awkward questions everyone wants answered.

BBC TV is now primarily an entertainment medium - mesmerising when it fuses science and fabulous footage of the Natural World, tedious when it relies on clich and empty-headed personality to breathe life into weary formats.

"Reasonably well educated" viewers want good news coverage - but dissecting news means analysing views.Increasingly BBC News is reluctant to do that. The post-Iraq clash with Tony Blair cowed producers. iPlayer and Sky Plus have reduced the "liveness" of TV. Many younger viewers don't have TV sets - they selectively watch what appeals to them online.

Perhaps we should be more worried if Chris Patten doesn't use the digital world of "catch up" TV, the internet, YouTube and Facebook to expand his world view.

But here's the rub.

Chris Patten may cheerfully cough up 145 per annum to not watch TV. He probably also pays council tax to not use libraries and income tax to not use the NHS. Like many taxpayers he hardly consumes the public services he pays to provide.

Is that right? Is it sustainable?

Somewhere between the stodgy caution of the BBC, the sensationalism of the tabloids the cacophony of the internet, "reasonably educated" citizens everywhere are piecing together their own version of reality. Let's hope Chris Patten is no exception.