One reason for these changes has been the greatly
increased competition for audiences following the rise of satellite and cable
channels. Combined with the onset of a free market from the 1980s and general
television "de-regulation," this has led to a commercial obsession
with grabbing viewers` attention-a kind of "watch me and buy something
culture."
Yet this is not necessarily what television viewers
want. When we actually interviewed audience groups, we found that people`s
attitudes were rather different from what the broadcasters had assumed. Some
people were completely "turned off" from the developing world (about
25 percent of the sample), but the reason was in part the constant negative
diet of images they were given. As one interviewee put it: "Well every
time you turn on the TV or pick up a paper, there`s another (war) starting or
there is more poverty or destruction. It is all too much."
Nearly all the people interviewed recalled negative
images since that was largely what they had been exposed to on television.
Levels of interest, however, were not nearly so uniform. What actually bothered
a majority of viewers was that they simply did not understand the images they
were being shown. As one put it: "I have a constant sense of not being
properly informed about background to issues and things like that."
A frequent complaint was that journalists merely took
for granted that the audience knew what the story was about. In the course of
this study, we worked very closely with journalists and some confirmed what the
viewers were saying. One commented to us that news reporters were effectively
told not to focus on explanation, but to go for eye-catching events like
fighting, shooting or riots. As he put it, they had been stopped from doing
"explainers"-now it was "all bang, bang stuff."
As a result of this work, we began to discuss with
journalists how TV coverage might be improved. We agreed that we would conduct
a new pilot study in which BBC journalists joined a focus group of
"ordinary" TV watchers. The purpose was to examine what these viewers
understood (or didn`t) from a TV news report, and then to discuss this with the
journalists who had actually made the news item. We also wanted to find out how
much the viewers` understanding of the story affected their level of interest
in it. David Shukman from the BBC was one of the journalists present, and we
began by watching two news reports that he had presented on the continuing war
in Angola and the terrible effects which land mines had on the local population.
His report contained very distressing images and had
a strong impact, producing great sympathy from the viewers. Yet it also had the
normal negative effect of being interpreted as one more set of war images from
Africa. The viewers` response was that it was sad, but nothing really to do
with them since nothing could be done. The news report had noted that the oil
and diamond trades financed the crisis, and that because of corruption within
Angola, people in that country profited from the war. This fitted the viewers`
notions that it was basically an "African" problem, because as they
saw it, African people were simply not very good at governing themselves.
At this point I intervened in the discussion and
introduced some new information. I asked the group where the mines and
munitions had come from. The group reasoned that they came from industrialized
countries, and that Britain, America and Eastern Europe sold armaments. I then
asked how they thought the weapons were paid for. The answer was through the sale
of diamonds, oil and by money laundering, all of which had been mentioned in
the news item. I drew their attention to suggestions that the City of London
was involved in the illicit transfer of large sums of money from Africa (e.g.
London Evening Standard 20/10/00). I proceeded to ask them if anyone was
wearing a diamond.
We eventually did this exercise with three different groups and in each of them there was a very surprised reaction to this question and great shock at the implication that if they purchased a