We had a look at the Sunday Times attitude towards Richard Littlejohn (H/T Sue at Is the BBC biased?) and various BBC reviews of films it sees as at odd with its world view.
TV reviewers seem to be a redoubt of a particular brand of liberal, middle class snobbery which looks down its nose at the ‘common man’.
Here is the guilty secret of a Guardianista…
Why Top Gear remains annoyingly excellent television
Liking Top Gear brings shame. Jeremy Clarkson embodies everything that’s wrong with straight, white, old men, pampered but inexplicably vengeful, running the country. I’d rather drive a pastel-blue Hyundai Accent 1.5 CRTD GSI than be among the Top Gear studio audience, with their furious Ukip faces and suspiciously uniform laughter.
Ah those angry, straight, white, vengeful white men with furious UKIP faces packing out the audience.
The Telegraph is little better. It reviews Channel Four’s anti-UKIP bit of propaganda and suggests that its not bad except that…
However, it made one fatal error. The white working class, the disenfranchised section of society that Farage has courted, were reduced to an unruly, stereotyped mob, an army of bald-headed, beer-swilling thugs. A braver, more thoughtful piece would have put a “white van man” type at the heart of the drama: challenged his prejudices, certainly, but also given him a voice.
Now that’s the kind of support you don’t need….argues that ‘white van man’ is being stereotyped (Isn’t that a stereotype in the first place?) and then paradoxically claims that their ‘prejudices’ needed to be challenged.
So not only are all UKIP supporters dismissed as white van drivers, their views are dismissed as being based on ignorant prejudice whilst of course any political views the Reviewer holds are intelligent, informed and balanced with a tinge of humanity.
Perhaps we should have a UKIP ‘Lenny Henry’ ..an angry white one of course…demanding equality of representation on TV and in the news.
I read somewhere (sorry cannot recall where, so hence no link) that the Channel 4 anti-UKIP bit of propoganda was part funded by the EU who supported its production.
Did anyone else see that?
This isn’t where I saw the statement first, so my original question remains out there but this could be of interest to some.
https://www.change.org/p/channel-4-apologise-for-the-programme-ukip-the-first-100-days-this-programme-is-an-absolute-digrace-it-is-sheer-slander-funded-by-the-european-union-completely-fabricated?recruiter=219465961&utm_campaign=twitter_link_action_box&utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=share_petition
‘..suspiciously uniform laughter’
For a Graun to highlight laugh tracks is an interesting precedent.
I agree that what I hear is seldom what I see in the hanger set. However, equally, from QI to HIGNFY, the response doesn’t seem as vocal as the audio suggests. Especially when humour is sacrificed to serve panellists’ political sniping.
Meanwhile, the MSM does seem to be sticking with its characterisation of UKIP as solely the party of Al Murray lookalikes, ignoring the demographic evidence of my own lying eyes.
This may also frustrate actual members and those looking around to compare what the media try to spin with what is.
Still, the edit suite exists to speak for the nation.
Apparently.
http://order-order.com/2015/02/17/everyone-flips-out-at-c4s-100daysofukip/
Cited comments all bear obligatory distain, but do have that major ‘but’ to suggest a major own goal on the propaganda front from one of their own has them rattled.
This will not play well with those who can see elite patronising a mile off and who grow weary of propaganda. Especially when poured on with an unsubtle ladle.
I doubt the gobby end will, but UKIP would be well advised to stay restrained in sorrow at what shills the partial media estate has become, rather than going large in outrage at what stitch-ups EU pr’s can concoct.
People can still recoginse what’s going on, and react to overt manipulation attempts accordingly.
The media is only broadcasting to itself with this UKIP mockumenatry. It just clarifies the distance between sneery media types and the thick proles they despise. And therefore acts as an own goal on the part of the MSM and the established parties.
By the way Channel 4 maintains that “most” of it revenue is from advertising but I can’t genuinely work where the rest comes from as it is not paid for by the overburdened British taxpayer/ TV owner. Unlike the BBC. So from where?
I believe that CH4 is, just like the bbc, a state owned broadcaster. It is true that it receives part income from advertising but as I recall it also receives funding, I think, from the bbc tv licence funds. I’ve often wondered if this blog shouldn’t change its name to biasedbbcandchannel4.
Looking at the CH4 annual financial statement for 2013, I cannot find an item in their income which looks like a state or bbc funding item, but then I did find it difficult to interpret. If any accountants are reading perhaps they could educate me/us regarding CH4’s accounts? Of course, CH4 is a state broadcaster which is supposedly independent of political interference.
This is from WIKI…
In 2007 due to severe funding difficulties, the channel sought government help and was granted a payment of £14 million over a six-year period. The money would have come from the television licence fee and would have been the first time that money from the licence fee had been given to any broadcaster other than the BBC.[25] The plan was scrapped by The Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Andy Burnham, ahead of “broader decisions about the future framework of public service broadcasting”.[26] The broadcasting regulator Ofcom released their review in January 2009 in which they suggested that Channel 4 would preferably be funded by “partnerships, joint ventures or mergers…
My word! Burnham not all bad! Shocker to this house hold!
“Perhaps we should have a UKIP ‘Lenny Henry’ ..an angry white one of course…demanding equality of representation on TV and in the news.”
I think that Tommy Robinson did a pretty good job of explaining why he was ‘angry’ but I can’t see our TV channels, (or radio for that matter), giving his like a chance to put across an ‘opinion piece’, yet anyone who has been on these shores for more than a month would be under no doubt that EDL/Robinson were ‘bad’, not from direct evidence but from the drip, drip of ‘opinion’ that our media packs its ‘impartial’ output with.
As for Top Gear, well I think it is dire; a pack of over-paid teenagers abusing over-priced machinery. Maybe I’m wrong, I’ve never lasted through a whole programme, but each to their own. In a free society it should always be right to be able to criticise any programme but criticising and stereotyping, (isn’t that banned nowadays?), the largely passive audience is cowardly because the audience can’t respond en bloc.
Top Gear suffers from what I can only think of as juvenile dementia.
I spotted the typical middle class snobbery towards the working class last night with the bits I saw eg the radio phone in with the cockney woman. I always thought the liberal left were supposed to be the champions of the working class or that is what they usually say….
They hate and fear the working class. See how they are stereotyped in all tv drama.
Have you ever see the middle class surrounded by the classes they dislike at an event?
It is an eyeopener. iIl at ease and a little afraid. I was in the cheap enclosure at the Grand National last year. I like it there and being an old racing man find the young people lively and very kind to an oldtimer.
Bumped into some middle class couples who confided that they felt very out of place and overwhelmed. – the L:iverpool boys and girls really dressup for the National.
I just laughed and told them to relax. Nobody was interested in them.
The metropolitan middle class is really unable to understand the ordinary people any more. Hence the silly show last night and the complete faiure to get UKIP.
I think the rise of UKIP can be viewed as a factual example of what Peter Brimelow said:
“Immigration is a profoundly powerful issue once it gets into politics. It is a party breaker, if parties don’t respond to it – people will form new parties. There is no more powerful issue in democratic politics than immigration.”
The last sentence of that quote explains why the LibLabCon avoided talking about it like the plague; the sole reason they do so now, is because they have been forced to by the threat posed by UKIP.