With that in mind please watch the following:

What keeps inflation rising?

And ask yourself whether it did a good job. I think it is misleading and does a poor job of explaining things. One gets the impression that Richard Scott thinks the increased wheat prices are because of Chinese people eating vast quantities of toast.

Click here to listen to Jon Ronson’s Radio 4 programme with Robbie Williams. It’s kind of a melancholy programme. One of the reasons I think Jon Ronson is so special is he lets subjects speak for themselves, unadorned. and respects his audience enough to let them make up their own minds. I agree with Brandon.

The assumption about an audience, needed to arrive at a conclusion of inaccessibility, is worrying. Accessibility is totally wrong. The most patriarchal thing since Abraham is that broadcasting needs to be accessible. I don’t necessarily think there’s an assumption people are stupid, but suspect there’s an assumption people are not interested in complexity. So, as a result, controversial issues turn into tabloid, bite size chunks, which alarm people irresponsibly, or presentation heavy documentaries, light on detail and low in accuracy. Maybe people being turned off by politics, science, the arts, and current affairs, is, in part, because they associate it with ‘accessible’ broadcasting. People sense that they’re being spoken down-to.

There should be an assumption that the majority of people are not stupid, and that complex subjects should be presented to inform. That is a different assumption from accessibility, because it assumes the viewers are intelligent and capable of learning. That not everything in a documentary needs to be so dumbed down it is accessible to the majority of viewers. People are capable of looking things up that interest them. The BBC used to produce decent fact sheets. As such there is zero replay value in many BBC current affairs programmes, and documentaries, because the information within them is so light very few people would have a problem with remembering their contents. Unless distracted by the special effects, and music track.

The BBC needs to compete to survive and in order to compete, with the other channels, many of whom are now producing documentaries of acceptable quality, the BBC needs to produce documentaries that are better. They desperately need to take a step-backwards. Until the late nineties BBC documentaries were the envy of the world. The BBC is the broadcaster best placed to attract the next David Attenborough(s) and needs to do that right away if it is to survive.

And the BBC could. Because the talent tucked away in places like BBC 4, a channel that receives a tiny fraction of the license fee and speaks for itself. Likewise Radio 4. Accessibility should be regarded as a failed experiment.

It virtually goes without saying that producing reality television, from talent shows to DIY, when everyone is doing it, makes the BBC less distinguishable from the commercial channels. Sacrificing long-term survival for short-term popularity. BBC 3 is, to my mind, schizophrenic, veering between sub-Channel 4 youth television, and, occasionally, decent drama/comedy. Half of what is on BBC 3 is done on commercial channels, and often better. I don’t think there is a dearth of talent - the talent is out there – the BBC needs to aggressively seek it out.

Someone needs a big brush to sweep away accessability and replace it with talent. Talent should reflect the subjects they’re involved in. There should be no more broadcasters covering subjects that leave them so out of their depth they look stupid.

Much of the above applies to the rest of the media but I don’t care about them as much as the BBC. I would like to be able to mock foreign friends about how much better BBC documentaries are than theirs. I felt smug when I could do that.

Click here to lose a little more faith in humanity.

And, was somewhat perplexed that the story didn’t appear to be new, given the widespread coverage it was receiving, and that, furthermore, the finger didn’t appear to be severed in any sense of the word. I think Ben Goldacre is right to draw attention to such risible coverage from people we rely on for news. See also.

I think I’m on safe ground saying shows about people with ugly and/or embarrassing medical conditions, are a modern freak-show.  Especially reality television that deals with disfigurement. Such programmes often have fuck-all to do with the people they purport to document – I’m not being callous - it’s just that disfigured people are cheaper than actors and the make-up is better.  Quite often they get paid peanuts in the process. The documenting comes second to the sights and sounds. But…

If people can be desensitised to disfigurement, is it a good thing for disfigured people?  If viewers become desensitised to disfigurement, in real-life they will stare less, and, maybe, be less afraid.  Which would be a good thing.  However, given the tenuous and complex links between violent television and violent behaviour, it’s probably difficult to say that desentisation will lead to better treatment of disfigured people.  In the same way that it can’t be said violent television is ever the primary factor contributing to violence. I don’t think freak-shows, aside from supplying an income to the performers, improved the lot of disfigured people.  Still, I’m an optimist, I hope that there are positive side-effects to the modern freak-show.

A seriously negative side-effect of this, could be that in order to maintain viewers, medical reality TV will perpetually search for more extreme medical conditions.   In order to maintain shock value.  Like soap operas adding an explosion or violence.  Reality TV will  have to go to poor countries to find people shocking enough. Poor people with extreme medical conditions, on our screen, for titillation. Which, if it generates awareness of medical conditions in poor countries, isn’t such a bad thing.  The next thing is people may empathise. Tourist destinations may be shamed into action.  But..

It could still just be about titillation. I don’t, for a second, think that the majority of medical reality television is made for any altruistic reason at all.  I don’t think it’s immoral and I’m not even sure it’s all that harmful, but I do think it amoral, in that it boils-down to viewing figures, and best commercial practice.   Change will be in response to a changing audience.  I hope people become so desensitised to disfigurement John Merrick could walk down the street naked and people would be more shocked by his penis than his elephantiasis.