THE PUBLIC INTEREST

It would appear that I may have been mistaken in my comments about the media frenzy in respect of the Duke of Edinburgh’s death. I stated that the amount of coverage said more about the British than it did about the Prince Consort; however, in the light of the numbers of complaints to the BBC about the extended coverage and the slashing of its viewer ratings as a result, I must revise my opinion of the British. The BBC controller of programming should do the same, as should those at ITV. Channel 4 on the other hand, even at 2 hrs of coverage, was very brief indeed.

In any event, the state of mind of the media was completely at odds with the public interest. By that I mean what the public is actually interested in. Having clearly been preparing for the Duke’s demise, the programmers must have been inundated with so much material from producers and presenters seeking to get their pennyworth in, that they missed the actual mood of the public. As a result, a decision was made to just put out the whole lot. Big mistake. The public had grown up with Prince Philip. He was now a ninety-nine-year-old man who had retired from public life. They would been be happy to celebrate and toast his hundredth, but if he didn’t make it, given his various visits to hospital, it would be sad for the family but not an unexpected loss. Well done him would have said enough, but hang on, why do we have to miss out on East Enders, Masterchef (the final? – of all episodes to scratch) or whatever favourite program we have chosen for Friday night during this lockdown to keep us sane. Therein lies the true interest of the public.

So, I apologies for my wholesale comment about the British. I should have been more specific about which “British” I was profiling. I will now do some more outrageous stereotyping. The programmers I refer to are still very much part of (whether they choose to admit it or not) a very British class system.  They have probably been educated at a grammar school, public school or something equivalent.  They went on to University and did degrees in Journalism, History or P.P.E., preferably at Oxford or Cambridge but in any event a “Good University” They might even have been part of a University Challenge team. They too, are in the habit or making stereotypical British assumptions about what the great British Public are interested in. In doing so they make class distinctions and have a mistaken belief that all things related to the Royal Family are of paramount importance. In this they are seriously in error and consequently ignorant of just where the public interest lies, as was I.

The reality is that the only people who showed the kind of interest the programmers assumed was public, were the very people who were being trotted out for interviews about their personal interaction with the Duke. All those little anecdotes that made them all smile benignly in reminiscence of their contact with the great man.  The general public however were far more interested in who won MasterChef and the latest plot point in their favourite programs. They very quickly let the BBC have their views, by switching off and sending in complaints.  Nevertheless, the BBC continued its outdated coverage into the following day.

In my view this is all further evidence that this is still a very class conscious society, reenforced by the unchanging attitudes of certain television and other media executives. Jingoism is still very much the preferred course to follow in the minds of “these people”. I know that to them I am one of “those people”.  Vive la difference, as Jacques Derrida might say. It would be wonderful to have his deconstructive take on these events.

What we effectively had was a catalogue of The Duke of Edinburgh dispensing largesse to the public and keeping them in their place. His visits to factories and other work places, were classic patronage, where he invariably meets a greeter who would introduce him to a line of people, and he would crack a joke and put them at their ease. This would then be the subject of the anecdote. “He was so nice, not at all stuck up, so funny, put us all at ease” etc.  We had this scenario time and again. No wonder the viewing public were sick of it. People do not like to be patronised, let alone be reminded of how long it has been going on by watching it demonstrated through the night, ramming it home. At the other end we had his cousins and various relatives describing how they patronised him, the Greek refugee, who didn’t really know where he belonged. He had some very good teachers on just how to fit in, and fit in he did with flying colours.

But still the people will go on being patronised, they will continue buying The Sun, the Daily Mail and Daily Mirror.  They will pick up the Metro and Evening Standard on the tube or bus, going to work and coming home, although circulation is dropping. As to the i, The Guardian and the Financial Times, they are in an even swifter decline. As an aside, barely 3.5 million people buy newspapers today whereas over 15 million did in 1947.  As a percentage of the population, that indicates an astonishing decline in readership. I cannot say what the web views of these publications are like.

But I digress. What is good to note is that the British public is very willing to complain about what they see on their televisions and other digital devices. So far as the media is concerned they have a lot to learn about the public interest.