:
Sky and ITN ran clips of the footage without the audio, the BBC’s footage contains the sound of children crying, even though the babies have respirators in their mouths.
A spokeswoman for the Oxford hospital said: “There was no audio on our clip.”
“The BBC must have put it over.”
“I thought they weren’t supposed to do things like that.”
A BBC spokesman said the corporation should have left the footage alone.
He said: “We received the film without sound and on reflection we should have kept it that way.”
The sound of babies crying has now been removed from the story for its viewing on the Six O’Clock News.
This latest demonstration of the BBC’s attachment to manufacturing ‘the truth’, fake but accurate style, was briefly mentioned at the end of last night’s Newsnight, though wasn’t newsworthy enough to rate a mention, nor even an apology on the BBC’s Six or Ten O’Clock news broadcasts. Strange that. Would anyone care to bet on the likelihood of an apology on today’s One O’Clock news broadcast? Anyone?
Thank you to Biased BBC reader Bernard W. for the link.
I think we’ve touched on this before, but isn’t there a whole department within the BBC (Bristol?), that specialised in dubbbing sound effects onto silent nature footage? I remember that they themselves were the subjects of a ducumentary about how they impersonate the lesser-spotted wobblebat eating its prey.
And every time we see slow-mo film coupled with real time sound – is that fakery?
And was Toady’s AmericaHate slot a record this morning (Friday)? I reckon it was 0605.
they just can’t help themselves, can they?
This is not fakery, this is standard practice, you use a Sound FX library to add appropriate sound FX. Look up hospital, children and atmos, and add to your source pictures.
Hmmmm… I guess we’re heading for some sort of Dogme approach to broadcasting.
It’s not only fakery its stupid. I know from experience that one of the most upsetting things about having a baby on a respirator is that the baby cannot cry.
Why do the BBC (and others) feel the need to add video to EVERY story? For example, on a recent story about Dentists, we had endless video clips of Dentists and open mouths of patients? Considering the story was about the lack of NHS Dentists, wouldn’t an interview with Gordon Brown or the Health Minister (whoever that is these days) have been more appropriate?
These pointless video clips get used more and more. I know what teeth look like and I know what a baby looks like.
Even worse is where the BBC use old video footage in news stories. Just lazy journalism.
Martin it is because people in TV news (in the whole industry, not just the BBC) have sat through countless focus groups where for every person expressing an opinion similar to yours there are as many, if not more, saying they like the visuals.
The younger they are, the more they like it, the more the industry does it, the less people over 45 like it, as a generalisation.
The BBC had that well-known architect of the liberal media hegemony Frank Luntz do a series of sessions with TV News audiences*, and the generational differences are pretty stark.
It is very hard for a mainstream mass-market channel like BBC1 or ITV1 to please everybody, and rightly or wrongly, the media are obsessed with chasing ‘youth’.
*Which also revealed how little the older audience thinks of Sky News, and therefore how discerning they are
Heck, we pay for the equipment and the training – and for the meeja graduates who operate the equpiment; and given that we’ve already paid for it, I say let’s really go for it! Next time there’s a story on dentistry (or babies) I want the sound of dinosaurs fighting apes; I want the music from a high-speed Benny Hill bikini-chase next time I see footage from the Hamas-Fatah bloodletting; I want the sound of mass-weeping (with spooky echo) next time Gordon Brown is shown smiling that cracked-granite grin of his.
Hey, we’ve paid for it all already, and we don’t expect honesty from these people in any case, so why not insist they use their equpiment to show us all a good time!?
Come on Reith, get on the case. Make us love the BBC again…
What was interesting was they DIDN’T show the large queues of people trying to get signed up to an NHS dentist.
The BBC are also guilty of continually showing melting ice in the Artic or Antartic whenever they talk about global warming. Ice melts all the time, so it’s a distortion of the truth to simply show melting ice. Not that the BBC cares about the truth.
If ice never melted at the poles it would be hundreds of miles thick by now.
DR the fact that you call it ‘standard practice’ is very telling. It’s only become standard practice because the BBC insist on doing it all the time and we’ve become brainwashed by them.
Incidentally, other networks did not add sound…
I noticed this same ‘added realism’ on an American National Public Radio news report on Iraq the other morning.
The reporter was talking of an attack by American forces (in which innocents were killed, of course) and in the background of the report was the sound of machine gun fire.
For a moment I was impressed that they had gotten this story so fresh from their reporter and had managed his report from the battle front onto the air so rapidly. It certainly added credibility to his statement that civilians had,in fact, been killed. After all, the reporter was on the scene.
Then the reporter mentioned that he was in Washington D.C., and I realized I had been played for a fool by off-the-shelf sound effects.
“David Gregory (BBC):
Hmmmm… I guess we’re heading for some sort of Dogme approach to broadcasting.”
As opposed to the ‘Dogma’ approach of Al Beeb David?
Chuffer | 16.11.07 – 7:54 am |
“And every time we see slow-mo film coupled with real time sound – is that fakery?”
Speaking from personal experience, I can say that yes, that can only be done via an edit. Unless you’re hearing obviously slooowwed dooowwwn soouuunnnd. Otherwise, the real-time audio is dubbed over the slo-mo footage (and probably strategically looped to make the duration match the video). Very common. It’s only real fakery if the audio track comes from another source.
Also, every single nature documentary has an f/x crew adding footsteps, rustling, animal sounds, etc. You don’t hear rabbits’ footsteps in the snow when you are filming the animals from a hundred yards away with a zoom lens, so they have to do something. This eliminates the need to worry about removing extraneous background noise, etc. All regular film productions have these people. They are called “Foley artists”, and you can see them in the credits of all kinds of films and tv. So it’s nothing new or unacceptable. Yes, it’s stupid to have the sound of babies crying when they are shown to be on a respirator, but it’s just part of the normal “dramatizing” that the BBC – and too many other news organizations – add all the time to sex up their footage.
What I object to more is when they add “theme” music to some report, which often adds another context entirely to what we’re viewing. Yes, I know it has already been pointed out that this is becoming common practice everywhere. But from what I’ve seen lately, it’s often an editorial comment in the form of music, e.g. showing a montage of Bush and Blair with The Carpenters’ “Close to You” as a soundtrack. That sort of thing is decidedly unprofessional. I also find it kind of distasteful (but not actually offensive or anything) to have heavy dramatic music accompanying the intro footage to a report on the opening of the Holocaust archives in Germany. Surely such a topic doesn’t need anymore sexing up to get the audience’s attention.
Sadly there are too many times when a BBC report treads the fine line between adding music for dramatic effect (to keep the proles from switching over, yeah) and editorial commentary.
Reg: ZZzzzzzzinggggg!
David: It is a very interesting point. Most football “highlight” packages use sound effects of crowds cheering.
I’ve will confess I’ve used city or countryside “atmos” when I’ve had to strip the audio from archive footage that has a voice track all over it.
Pictures without sound can appear very very strange.
For this blog I would point out the use of music or sound effects can be construed as bias if they push the audience in a particular way or to reach a particular conclusion.
Sound is much more powerful that people realise. But people also miss it when it’s not there. So all broadcasters need to take great care with using it.
Dr. Gregory,
I understand the need for some sound in these things. When I say music can come across as an editorial comment (inferred or implied?), I am speaking about something much more than just added audio when there would be none otherwise. I mentioned two blatant examples, and there’s really no way to interpret them any other way.
As I said, I have no problem with added audio for valid reasons (I must say it was extremely disappointing when I first saw “the man behind the curtain” in a nature documentary, but then reality set in). Greater thought must be given when producers choose the background music for particularly important or sensitive topics.
I think some BBC producers are well aware of how powerful sound (music in this case) can be, and have chosen their tracks accordingly. There’s a difference between just standard ambiance-setting and editorial comment.
It’s one thing adding a bit of general “atmos” to footage; quite another to dub on sounds that would not have been in the original.
Over the years I’ve added all sorts of atmos to stuff which has accidentaly been shot mute or where the sound quality is crap; traffic noise is a good example.
The hubbub FX of a city centre is pretty similar to what would actually have been recorded had the dozy camera operator doing GVs of the street remembered that his mic was off/the gain was too low/etc.
But I would never, for instance, deliberatly add sounds that could not have existed in the original recording, like the sound of ship’s foghorns in a high street…
Or babies crying while they are on ventilators…
I’m all for a broad cross section of BBC bias but this one does seem a tad trivial and rather unbecoming of Bias BBC.
Were they muslim babies may I ask?
in any case this is mawkish audience manipulation rather than bias
Sarah Jane,
In some cases, it’s both.
We need shorter and cheaper news bulletins and a corresponding sacking of staff to keep the TV tax down.
One newsreader instead of two could result in a big cash saving straight away, and so could the avoidance of having a reporter repeat what the newsreader has just told us.
The redundancies at the BBC are not enough. There is scope for many more.
Well i’ve said this before, but why do we need both national and regional news rooms? why not do away with the national newscasts and divulge(?) the national news segments to be broadcast by the regional news rooms? Surely this would be a huge saving and would demonstrate the BBC’s “commitment” to regionalisation.
One more point on dubbing: I noticed, while watching the horse racing the other day (it may not have been on BBc, come to think of it), that the soundtrack (of thundering horses hooves/jumps being hit) didn’t match with what we were watching. Is there really a man operating a sound effects box live during the race? It would be understandable – after all, putting mikes around a whole racetrack…
Chuffer | 17.11.07 – 8:02 am
Is there really a man operating a sound effects box live during the race?
No, there’s a man in the studio banging two coconut shells 🙂
In the 1930s (the ‘Golden Age’?) Australians heard the Ashes cricket from England over the radio complete with crowd noises and the crack of bat meeting ball. Unfortunately real-time broadcasts hadn’t been invented yet so the reader read, some minutes later, from cables adding SFX and his own emotions and colour: Bradman, caught in slips, the Ossies are despondent! Background of crowd noises.
Television is an audio/visual media. Pictures without sound seem strange. Talking heads are boring – may as well turn on the radio. So long, as noted by others, they are not used to editorialize or bad choices (e.g baby crying on a respirator) I don’t think there’s a real problem.
BTW how do you illustrate Global Warming? If it does exist it is a process of years, not seconds.
“BTW how do you illustrate Global Warming? If it does exist it is a process of years, not seconds.”
Sound Effects for global warming items are easy. They’re accompanied with a repetitive whining from the BBC.
“how do you illustrate Global Warming? If it does exist it is a process of years, not seconds.”
The soundtrack would be hand-wringing in the studio and aircraft noises as reporters jet around the world to investigate…
Truth is beauty and beauty truth.
Happening into a room in which four infants were on respirators you might think to yourself
– gosh, its quiet
– golly, all I can hear is an electronic whirr.
– lordy, why are the infants not crying?
But the BBC are not beautiful and they are not truthful and so in they wade with crass fakery and artifice and obfuscation and beauty & truth are the ones that you can hear crying.
“Top Gear” is a fine example of BBC commitment to fakeness and deceiving of spectators. And when that show “analyses” american cars it gets 2x worst.
PJ, the show is scripted and I think it’s pretty obvious to most people. Or does every programme like Top Gear need to have a disclaimer? Its popularity would suggest not. It’d otherwise end up like the dull consumer programme that had lousy ratings it was before.
Even they made a reference to its editing recently with a nod to the miraculous appearance of Clarkson’s poppy.
Lets hope people like yourself never get into entertainment production.
I should also point out that only yesterday I saw an episode where they were singing the praises of the Ford GT40, with Clarkson pointing out that he’s buying/bought one
Ben, the debate on the extent to which TV misleads its audience has got out of hand and in doing so enables the media in general to dismiss the concerns that started the debate.
I think everyone (at least a majority) of viewers recognise that visual media like TV does not always show stuff in real time or as they happen. It would be really boring and irritating if they did so. So the viewers and the programme makers agree to collude in the fiction which suspends belief to enable Michael Palin to imply he is meeting someone for the first time when it might easily be the third take. We all expect this sort of ‘fakery’ and it is not inherently deceitful. Neither is the use of noddies which permits a degree of continuity to appear which helps the viewing experience.
However, the TV programme makers have pushed this convention to (and beyond) breaking point. By inserting a presenter into a programme where not only was he not present, but where the interview was actually conducted by someone else is not part of the deal. Presenting children on the screen as having been selected from a competition when they have at least been partly bussed in from a drama school is not part of the deal. Selectively editing film to make a better story (i.e. one that fits the narrative) is not part of the deal.
That, together with the left wing bias of the presenters and programme makers is destroying (if it hasn’t already destroyed it) the trust that the British public once had in their public service broadcaster.
I now treat the BBC current affairs output in the same way as the outpourings of a politician – what are they not telling me and are they actually lying to me.
Arthur Dent,
Well said. I would just add that my main objection in this category is the use of music for what seem to be editorial purposes.
It’s one thing to add pastoral background music for atmosphere in a countryside doco or whatever, but it’s another thing entirely to add obviously dramatic or mood-setting music for news reports. That’s where I’ve noticed deliberate attempts to guide the audience’s reaction, and that’s a major problem.
The real question is just how much BBC editors and producers realize they do this. I think most, if not all, of the instances to which I object are deliberate choices on their part, with intent to manipulate.
Arthur I’m actually in agreement with you when it comes to factual. Why put those sounds in, absolutely no reason and can greatly alter the context. Some things I think are permissable depending upon their impact if they’re for cost-saving purposes.
I was however referring to PJ’s criticism of Top Gear, an entertainment programme. Do you not think such opportunistic attempts to criticise the BBC make you (as a board) look like reactionary loons?
I’m not saying you are condoning these attacks, but it might help your cause if you – shock horror – defended the BBC from time to time.
Ben,
Just because the Clarkson lout bought an American muscle car doesn’t do much to support his pro-US bona fides in my view. The little fellow on Top Gear bought a similar American muscle car, got bored with ait and sold it, and Clarkson will do the same, and throw in an insult to the US when he announces it.
Clarkson may be a conservative voice in comparison to the vast majority of media luvvies, but he would not seem so in the US. In any event, I would suggest that he is more libertarian than conservative, in the sense that Americans use the latter term. Doesn’t he keep a home on the Isle of Man to escape UK taxes? He may appear to be an overbearing Conservative voice in your world, but that’s more because he’s rather large, loud, and overbearing.
He is no fan of America. Recall the Top Gear episode in which Clarkson and his cohorts did a road trip through part of the South, laying on the school-boy humor, and engaging (successfully) in hick baiting. Clarkson yukked it up constantly about his fears of being shot by rednecks, and summed up the affair by telling his viewers to avoid America.
There’s plenty of evidence that Clarkson’s opinion of the US is very much along the lines of the general BBC groupthink. Here is but one fairly recent example, in which Clarkson spends a good portion of an article about the tribulations of British ex-pats complaining about the awful effects of living in America (and, yes, nasty President Bush and nasty guns as well, straight out of the BBC style guide).
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/jeremy_clarkson/article2326687.ece
Clarkson may be a Conservative according to BBC groupthink, but even if he votes Tory he is most certainly not pro-America.
Aside from that, have you any comment on the editorial use of background music by your colleagues?
Ben, perhaps you failed to read the first sentence of my last post
Ben, the debate on the extent to which TV misleads its audience has got out of hand and in doing so enables the media in general to dismiss the concerns that started the debate.
I was of course referring to the debate in the comments on this site
Arthur, I thought you were referring to coverage in the wider media, the papers in particular
David…really…
I don’t think it’s worth going into Clarkson’s political leanings as I think most people realise he’s not being entirely serious. Top Gear have been through plenty of countries and he has covered many more over the course of his broadcast career, generally applying the same off the cuff attitude, bringing out every stereotype possible. It’d be wrong to call him jingoistic either, because he’s just as likely to deride many aspects of Britain.
Read his book and see if you think his comments are intended to be taken with a very large pinch of salt.
As you yourself say, school-boy humour.
“Clarkson may be a Conservative according to BBC groupthink, but even if he votes Tory he is most certainly not pro-America.”
Well, why should he be?
As for background music, I think it has probably been used to pad out reports rather than to convey twist the tone – just plain cheesy. On this I’m sure it’s not worth my time arguing.
Ben,
Hang on, you were citing Clarkson’s purchase of an American car as an example to counter PJ’s contention that Top Gear is biased against American cars, part of a larger BBC bias against the US in general. I have stated my position, also citing examples, that in fact PJ is probably right.
I am well aware that Clarkson is a loudmouth and is not meant to be taken seriously. However, the default setting on his noisemaker is not pro-US, and his serious opinion is most likely not so different. While he may not loathe great swaths of the country (those puritanical Christians who voted for George Bush and own guns) as much as some of your colleagues, neither does he approve of so many of my fellow citizens, and by extension, my country.
It’s a shame you find even the concept of the BBC unworthy of consideration. Yes, the majority of the time music is used as basic atmosphere and filler, as you suggest. However, I have witnessed on more than one occasion the use of music in a BBC report which is far more. Overly dramatic, or glaringly inappropriate music was used to create a specific context for the report or vignette. The music used in the bits to which I am objecting was definitely editorial in mood, and really cannot have been an accident. That is very different from pastoral strains accompanying a countryside report, or Eton Choirbook hymns setting up a story on some church development.
Perhaps even if I cite the most infamous example of the montage of Bush and Blair together in various settings, accompanied by “Close to You” by The Carpenters, you will laughingly dismiss that as a bit of comic relief, not meant to be taken seriously. There is no denying that many at the BBC, as well as many people in the media, and in the general public, looked at Blair as “Bush’s Poodle”, going to war for no good reason, etc., and that Blair was dragging the UK’s fortunes down just because he was Jeeves to Bush’s Bertie Wooster. The clear intent of this little sequence was to ridicule this relationship, and to ridicule the two of them.
A professional news broadcast would have people on with such opinions, yes indeed. A professional news broadcast would have featured reports on such opinions, yes indeed. A professional news broadcast would not create such a cheesy, insulting vignette. Make this is and show it on any BBC show in the entertainment division, and we’ll all have a laugh. Not on the news. Not ever.
Yeah, Ben, I’m barking. You be sure and tell me next time BBC News – any Division – shows a reel of Chavez and Ahmadimjihadi, or similar fan favorites, mugging and waving, with similar background music. On a real news programme.
It won’t happen. The clip I’m complaining about here is just the most awful one I’ve seen recently. Music is used in BBC News reports for distinctly editorial purposes, Ben. Not all the time, of course, but every once in a while. And that editorial slant only goes in one direction. It has no place in a professional, respectable news organization.