ITN Newquay report

[Robches]

What I can't stand is when they have their reporters shivering their balls off in Downing Street in the middle of the night, giving a piece to camera that could just as well be done in the studio, just to make it all seem more important. How much does that cost?

The worst example recently was when the BBC cut to their media correspondent, actually stood outside BBC Television Centre. What rubbish. The man was a few yards from the bloody studio, but they had him stood outside doing an outside broadcast, just so he could be in shot with TV centre. The fact that the story was about how the BBC faked the programme about the Queen didn't help. They had to set up a completely false and ridiculous broadcast to report on how the BBC faked a programme, and they couldn't see the fucking irony of it. I give the BBC another ten years at most.

[Trumpton]

ITV and indeed the BBC have been using this type of performance (it can not be described as reporting) technique for about a decade now. The "journalist" performs his/her piece to the camera - in the same manner as an actor would use. We see plenty of waving of arms around, the jabbing of fingers at us, the contorted facial expressions, the weird use of flat vowels, and the use of the bleeding obvious - such as standing in front of the sign of, for example, the Ministry of Defence and the journalist/performer swinging round and pointing with their thumb that they are standing outside the MOD.

In the Chris Morris series, The Day Today, he brilliantly satarises this type of TV reporting. I remember at the time a BBC executive denying that the BBC would ever sink that low - but he has subsequently been proved wrong, the BBC and ITV HAVE sunk that low!!

[jj]

Celebrity Journalism; perhaps C4 will do a series where the losers have to
go and interview Paris Hilton and the winners get to do a report from the
Colombian jungle on the cocaine-industry.