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Many of us can remember when the press had such a reputation
for telling the truth that the saying was "It's in the
paper, it must be right". And in those trusting days
there was the other saying, "A picture never tells a
lie." We have learned that such confidences are misplaced,
for whether by accident or design, what we get by the media
is often the truth but not necessarily the whole truth. There
is now the well recognised reality that what we are told is
not always the whole story; that people can be heard and seen
briefly and selectively when an interview or incident has
been lengthy and detailed and what one reads, hears or sees
is a "take out" of what is regarded as enough for
their purposes. There have been times when "a little
taken from much" has resulted in an unfair and unbalanced
account of something, and a one sided judgment is made on
restricted information. We have had many examples of media
interviews which were disaffected by intense and insensitive
questioning of interviewees who were unable to make immediate,
rational, responses to it. That because they were ill-equiped
for encounters in which there appears to be an attacker and
a victim. When the intention is to get to the right of a matter
care should be taken to ensure that honesty and decency are
the principles pursued by those whose task it is to obtain
for us information, and the opinions and responses of those
who have things to say to us. We generalise here but we particularise
when we express our deep concern at the way some politicians
and organisation leaders, are treated by interviewers who
lack that essential ability which is to speak and to listen
dispassionately to them. The result is that interviews can
be lacking in clarity and we are left dissatisfied with what
we have read, heard or seen. Perhpas for the reason that our
perceptions of the interviewees are different from how they
appear in such encounters. The media has an in-built imbalance,
best illustrated in this contention, a bad argument by a competent
speaker can be more effective than a good one by a less competent
performer. There is the other complaint that panel programmes
- "Let's Talk," BBC 1, is one of them - in which
the choice of panelists is such that the Unionist is often
out-numbered by three to one. A recent example was a Unionist
quartered with an SDLP MP, a journalist whose jaundised view
of Unionism is well known, a former Tory MP cum novelist whose
presence was the first question many must have asked why.
The long vaunted BBC balance, fairness and equal treatment
for all in this society is in question. We add the elementary
fact that while most us can talk and do it clearly and intelligibly,
it is something quite different to speak in public, by the
media or in the public place. Those whose task it is to do
that should use whatever advice is available to them to improve
their ability to communicate adequately with those to whom
they address themselves. If preparation is necessary in a
speech or an appearance and no one doubts it, presentation
is equally so, for what good is something thought through
if it is not heard distinctly and effortlessly by the hearer.
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