Happy new year, I had planned to do a list of 10, maybe 20 top media moments of last year, that was until a bad cold slowed me down over Christmas, but with regular cocktails of Lemsip Max and Bushmill's Black Bush Whisky I'm back onto my list. It's now compressed down to 1 - my most memorable media moment of 2011. No it's not the phone hacking scandal or the News of the World closure, because after The Sun's reporting of Hillsborough in 1989 nothing really surprised me about what the Murdoch papers were capable of. Although I did enjoy watching Rupert and James squirming on TV each night, I only wish it spread into the US and helped finish them off totally.
So my media moment of last year goes to ITV's current affairs programme, 'Exposure'. It was billed as the first of six documentaries, "providing an in-depth, revealing focus on a range of powerful subjects". The programme dealt with the links between Gaddafi and the IRA. The documentary was bad enough, taking 2 hours to repeatedly tell us something we already knew, that the former Libyan leader gave Irish Republicans weapons and lots of them. Then they showed footage that they claimed was the IRA in 1988 shooting down a British Army helicopter somewhere in Northern Ireland, only for it to turn out it was taken from a computer video game.
Even by the low standards of television that ITV seems to aim for, this was scandalous, are the viewers of ITV that 'dumbded down' now that they'll accept this kind of 'investigative journalism' or do ITV think checking minor details like this doesn't matter to the viewer. To think that this was the channel that once gave us quality, groundbreaking and award winning documentaries like 'World in Action'. The clip they used in the documentary they later admitted was from Arma 2, a videogame set in the fictional east European nation of Chernaus.
The best bit is when the narrator tells us that no one died in this attack, No shit!
It was lazy, stupid and comical televison, stick to soap operas and talent shows ITV.
The same documentary failed to also state that Gaddafi also supplied money for arms to the UVF at the same time. Gaddafi wanted anarchy in the world and was happy to invite both loyalist and republican factions as guests to his country and gave money to both. This was documented in Tim Pat Coogan's book - "The Real IRA" as well as other books in the last 30 years but surprisingly missing from this documentary.
ReplyDeleteHello gregb, good point well made, if the programme makers don't have the journalistic integrity to check the footage they're using I'm not suprised they failed to mention the point you've made. I think they were more interested in a sensational story, straight after Gaddafi's death rather than really examining what he did with his people's money.
ReplyDeleteTotally agree Peter.I'm tired of lazy or missleading journalism.Its bad enough that the majority of the population live in the dark about what goes on around them without being totally mislead when they o choose to watch a news base media.
ReplyDeleteCheers Neil for the comment, if it wasn't for the FA Cup being on ITV I don't think I'd ever watch it, oh yeah and Harry Hill as well.
ReplyDeleteWhen the zero-attention-span masses are force-fed commercial crap during the actual programming, rather than the advertising breaks, you just realise how infantile, apathetic and easily pleased the general population has become. Cheap tabloids and instantly-disposable- into-a-toilet-bowl-pot-noodle TV is the curse of the new millenium.
ReplyDeleteThat's quality blogging Fred, you wanna guest slot on here, Pot-noodle TV, love it! This documentary wasn't a classic chicken & mushroom or a beef & tomato, it was one of those shit flavours they've attempted in the last few years, chip shop curry or donner kebab, not worth boiling a kettle for.
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