Television
The Story is everything
Simon Hoggart
John Ware wrote a crucial article in the latest Sunday Telegraph, assailing The Rantzen Report for an unfair, misleading and wounding attack on the British Home and Hospital for Incurables. He illustrated the worst temptation for journalists in every medium.
Ms Rantzen's 'report' concerned a young brain-damaged man who lives in the hospi- tal. It claimed he was neglected by staff and left to vegetate alone in his room. Anyone watching it uncritically would have been appalled. But Mr Ware, who these days is the BBC's most effective investigative reporter, was puzzled; he has a friend in the same hospital and has come to admire the selfless (and miserably paid) dedication of the staff. When he went to look for him- self he discovered that the Rantzen show had been balefully misleading.
One small example: the programme claimed the patient had been kept from the hospital sports day and nobody had even bothered to put his wheelchair near a win- dow where he could watch the excitement. Ware found that the staff had been told the undercover Rantzen team (who were, quite unnecessarily, filming with a hidden cam- era) were the man's friends and so had left him undisturbed with them. His room did not even have a window with a view of the sports field.
Just another example of Esther's grand- standing perhaps — let's force compassion on to everyone and never mind who gets hurt. Her reply in the Independent struck me as somewhat vague and missed the chance to rebut the specific allegations. However, it leaves the question of how this dross is allowed on television in the first place. The answer is simple: bad reporting of any kind starts with the idea that The Story is everything. The Story is dramatic and clear-cut. It arouses strong emotions; it shocks, outrages and sometimes delights. It always avoids complications.
The truth rarely makes much of a Story, either in newspapers or on television. 'Overworked staff at a hospital for incur- ables sometimes fall short of perfection but are doing their best' is not a Story. 'Camilla Parker Bowles may look like Worzel Gum- midge but she must have some admirable qualities to mean so much to Prince Charles' isn't either.
John Bid, who invented the notion of the Bias Against Understanding, is sometimes credited as having always been valiant for the full truth, though that's not entirely my own recollection. LW-I's Weekend World under Birt was, in its earnest way, as obsessed with The Story as Esther Rantzen is. On Weekend World, The Story was
decided on Monday, and reporiers fanned out to stand it up so that it could be served to the public on Sunday. I used to get calls from their researchers; if you agreed with the central idea of The Story, you were interviewed and received a cheque for £50. If you didn't, you had a long acrimonious conversation and no dosh. The end result was like watching political broadcasts for only one party — you might be convinced if you saw nothing else.
One of the worst examples of the BBC's modern pursuit of The Story was a series called Out Of This World, which ended its run this week. Let's hope it doesn't come back.
If a man came to the BBC and said that he had found a lucky gem which cured can- cer, or prevented impotence, or who claimed that the Government was bom- barding him with deadly rays to stop him revealing the secrets of the Rosicrucians, the Corporation would have its humblest minion send him away.
Find someone who believes the more acceptable paranormal folderols, and they are welcomed with open arms. Britain's 'leading dowser' was given a lengthy free plug. I know a bit about dowsing, and there are no unbiased or repeated tests which give it any credence. And if you sink a well almost anywhere in this sodden country you will find water. The give-away came when we were told that 'be uses geological maps first, then his natural ability', which is like saying that a faith healer uses antibi- otics first, then his amazing powers.
Some fool was allowed to say that if the programme's 'Premonitions Bureau' bad been harnessed to warn of the Kobe earth- quake 'we could have saved a lot of lives'. How? Did the premonitions give the date and place? Or did they say, as I suspect, `Aaah, I foresee an earthquake, some- where, sometime ...' Why is this stuff allowed on air?
There was a story re-enacted (at vast expense) about the Haunted Computer. This was impossible to follow. Ken and Debbie, whose haunted computer it was, refused to have their faces on camera — always a bad sign. To be fair, at the end an academic was brought on to hint what non- sense it was. 'Science' got its usual caning, as if the fact that scientists are often wrong means that the loonies are always right. Poor old science, left behind again by the whoo-whoo brigade. Yet boring, dreary sci- ence has given us air travel, penicillin, radio waves, painless dentistry, and has doubled our life expectancy, whereas the paranormal offers us flying coffee mugs. This ghastly programme resembled The Rantzen Report in many ways. Little Was allowed to get in the way of The Story. Sliv- ers of truth were allowed in only if they contributed to The Story. The BBC's best reporters are, like John Ware, reduced to making their complaints in the pape.ts. Meanwhile, our money goes on misleading and arrogant rubbish like Rantzen Reports and Out Of This World.
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