True or false?
TELEVISION STUART HOOD
It was an interesting experience actually to be in Grosvenor Square at about 5 p.m. last
Sunday and then to come home to hear the
radio reports and see the television newsfilm. Radio was considerably more excited by the
occasion than television. A reporter from South Audley Street had an excited story about a mob, which raised visions of a seething and numerous crowd. Television was more factual, less emotional, and showed a fairly small body of activists butting away at the police barrier, throwing fireworks and placards and generally applying the tactic of unmasking the police. What neither radio nor television conveyed was the fact that, except in the south-west corner of the square, most people were walking about in a holiday mood, talking to friends, rubber- necking, larking in a fairly innocent way. Nor did the reports on sound film quite convey the relaxed easy feeling of the crowd as it walked down the Strand and Whitehall. Nothing was reported that was not the truth; but it was not quite the whole truth.
Among the rubbernecks were observers from the Mass Communications Research Centre at Leicester University. which with commendable initiative decided to carry out some field work on the demonstration. They attached one observer—he has worked with a television pro- duction team on a research project and knows their ways and jargon—to Bac Television News to study the editorial process at work on the reports, the agency tape and the newsfilm that flowed into the building during the day. Other observers were on the ground, partly to get a first hand impression of what was going on and to check it--as I did —against what appeared on the screen. partly to see whether there was any evidence that the television and film cameras contributed in any way to the violent incidents by providing, as it were, a stage on which to perform them and an immense audience to see them.
The results of their research will take some time to prepare and will be properly academic. The important thing is that someone has made
a contribution to an investigation of the work- ings of television. Considering how long tele- vision has been established in this country, re- search of this kind ought to be more advanced than it is. One reason for its backwardness is the fact that the professionals haye short- sightedly resisted investigations into their editorial and production thinking. Yet well- organised and well-planned research which attempts to evaluate the effectiveness of tele- vision as a means of communication and to discover its effect (if any) on an event like last Sunday's will tell us a great deal more than any number of panels and discussions based on mere opinion.
Of this the great Crossman confrontation was a sad example. There were too many par- ticipants even for a long programme. Some speakers were unable to develop their points because the chairman cut them off..Crossmap, having started off in a statesmanlike vein, began to score debating points and lashed himself into a paddy at the end when asked a perfectly reasonable question about a governmental `plot' against television. What was required was a more rigorously conducted discussion with Crossman and at most a couple of highly skilled, well-informed interviewers. There is an art in making the most of a conversation on the screen; not very many people have it. As in most other branches of life, the professionals do the job rather better than amateurs.
Only one point in the whole programme alarmed me. It was Crossman's view that poli- ticians ought not to be treated with anything less than deep respect, that what had set him against television was the mockery directed against the Conservatives at the end of their office. Why, I wonder, should politicians be exempted from ridicule? Why may television not indulge in its own equivalent of the cartoon? Is it because it is a mass medium and the masses ought to be protected from such things? This strikes me as a dangerous thought.
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