A Media Fable
| Thu Oct. 30, 2008 11:11 AM PDT
A MEDIA FABLE....Want to hear a story about the power of the media to shape public narratives? I know, I know, they're a dime a dozen. But this one from Britain is so spectacular that it's worth hearing about.
Here's what happened. Two weeks ago, an "edgy" comedian on BBC Radio 2 named Russell Brand decided to play a phone prank. Brand had once had a relationship with Georgina Baillie, the 23-year-old granddaughter of Andrew Sachs, the actor who played Manuel in Fawlty Towers, so he and his partner Jonathan Ross decided to give Sachs a call. They got Sachs' answering machine, and started off with this:
Brand: Look Andrew Sachs I have got respect for you and your lineage and your progeny, never let that be questioned.
Ross: Don't hint ...
Brand: I weren't hinting! Why did that come across as a hint?
Ross: Because you know what you did ...
Brand: That wasn't a hint ...
Ross: He fucked your granddaughter!
[laughter in the studio]
Brand: That's his answerphone!
Ross: I'm sorry ... I apologise Andrew, I apologise, I can't help it, you were talking about it and it was in my head, I apologise.
Half a million people were listening to this. The reaction was....nothing. Literally. Apparently there were a grand total of two complaints after the show aired.
In other words, the public had spoken, and they couldn't have cared less. So what happened next? Answer: a Mail on Sunday reporter alerted Sachs' agent, who asked for an apology from Brand and got it a week after the initial broadcast. Still, no one cared. The next day, though, the Mail splashed Brand all over its front page and has been giving him front page treatment ever since. It's sort of like the Fox News 24/7 loop whenever they get their hands on something useful to rile up the rubes.
So: left to their own opinions, no one cared about this. It's not as if it was a secret only brought to light after deep investigative reporting, after all. Even Sachs doesn't seem to have cared much to begin with (he apparently "reluctantly" approved broadcasting the tape before it aired). But after the Mail got its claws into the story, it became a national crisis. Brand has since been forced to quit the show, Ross is under fire to leave too, and the BBC is said to be near collapse over the episode. Earlier this week reporters descended on Italy to find the BBC's director-general, who was on vacation, and on Tuesday both the prime minister Gordon Brown and conservative leader David Cameron weighed in. The director-general quickly cut his vacation short and as I write this is apparently holding emergency meetings of the kind last seen in Churchill's bunker during World War II.
That's the power of the media for you. On October 18th two people complained. For a week after that nobody said a word. Today, one week and five front pages later, the entire country is in the middle of a firestorm. Remarkable, no?
UPDATE: Ezra has another good one here. It's more of a garden variety media fuckup, but still worth a quick read.
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Comments
The people who didn't care were those who listened to the show, because people who listen to shock jocks like that stuff. The people who did care after the Mail made a big deal of it were people who do not listen and never would.
And it would be lovely, if the head of the BBC replied along Joe Buck's lines, along with the remark, "and if they're not watching, why should I care?"
If you're going to be a busy-body, you've got to be busy enough to actually observe the offensive behavior.
"That's the power of the media for you...Today... the entire country is in the middle of a firestorm. Remarkable, no?"
With power like that, I hope the media never gets a bug up its ass to promote the invasion and bombing of some random country.
Pretty soon you'd have the whole of the US - politicians, media, rubes, even liberal bloggers - duped into believing in the necessity and moral righteousness of such a war. And that would suck.
Without disputing that the uproar may be over the top at this point, it's not unreasonable that if presenters on a BBC show are treating people rudely and abusively for fun, people who didn't watch the show might be upset. When Don Imus got in trouble a couple years ago for making racist comments about a women's basketball team, it wasn't because the people listening at the time were upset by the remarks. He got in trouble because it is wrong for a broadcaster to make gratuitously offensive racist comments about young women, regardless of whether the people who happen to be listening at the time are offended.
A few minutes after reading this post I got an email from my cousin in Ireland to join this group: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=36786845666. Small world. Needles to say, I joined.
Submitted by David Steven (not verified) on Thu Oct. 30, 2008 12:25 PM PDT.
The people who didn't care were those who listened to the show, because people who listen to shock jocks like that stuff. The people who did care after the Mail made a big deal of it were people who do not listen and never would.
Er except for the fact that Jonathan Ross is not a shock jock and Radio 2 is the station that people's mothers listen to... Apart from that, Joe, you're spot on with your analysis.
My suspicion is that, although pushed initially by a newspaper, this is actually an example of the media as a participatory sport. Times are tough at the moment, and Brits are finding it quite fun to kneecap a couple of celebrities.
It's absurd and random - true - but no more so than the factors that led to Ross and Brand becoming so famous in the first place. (Ross's contract is worth £18m.)
Submitted by Fae Yin (not verified) on Thu Oct. 30, 2008 12:36 PM PDT.
I agree with the point of your post, Kevin. However, while reading this I couldn't help but wonder how Georgina might have felt, even if these clowns had gotten parental permission (in ,fact, especially if they had). I only hope they asked her what she thought before airing this, because if they hadn't I would have been mortified to hear myself being bandied about the airwaves in such a callous way.
Even if she did approve, i think these guys got what they deserved, admittedly for the wrong reasons,as you rightly pointed out Kevin.
Submitted by fumphis (not verified) on Thu Oct. 30, 2008 12:42 PM PDT.
Let me say, as a longtime fan of the god that is Russell Brand, that he's not in any way a "shock jock." Nor is Jonathan Ross his regular partner. Brand did a weekly radio show with a friend, Matt Morgan, which was basically a convivial chat show, with him and Morgan riffing off each other and occasionally featuring a celebrity guest. It was a fantastic program that only infrequently dipped into inappropriateness, and Brand is a hysterically funny and very intelligent comic. He's quit the show over this brouhaha, by the way.
Also, you may remember him as the English boyfriend of Kristen Bell in "Forgetting Sarah Marshall."
This is another example of why the much older fable of the Emperor's New Clothes is so, so true. By creating this false sense of outrage, they can fool people into feeling like perhaps they are morally deficient if they AREN'T upset about the incident.
I see examples of the Emperor's New Clothes thing almost daily in the world at large as well as in my own backyard.
This same exact scenario occurred with Hillary Clinton's "RFK" remark. She had already used the assassination of RFK twice to justify her staying in the race until the end of the primaries. However, it wasn't until the third time she said it and Drudge splashed it all over his front page that it became the "ultimate gaffe". Then every (liberal) commentator from the NYT to Slate and MSNBC excoriated her for her insensitive remarks, and Obama even sent out a press release about it.
Now it seems ridiculous that anybody cared, but it shows how we don't choose what issues to focus on. The media chooses for us.
I find it human that people are shocked by surveillance in the novel 1984 when it is presented dramatically, but think nothing of the reality today of data aggregators like Choicepoint and the 50 government Fusion centers that collect dossiers on everybody.
(Somewhat) OT, but Sachs is a superb character actor who's career has been overshadowed by that one (terrific) role. Much more recently he played Manuel's polar opposite, at least where intellect is concerned: Albert Einstein. Took me the longest time to realize who that was under the makeup and why he kept striking me with odd familiarity. When I finally realized, I had a great laugh, though it wasn't a comic performance.
Media Week
December 6, 2004
Brent Bozell's PTC files 99.8% of all FCC indeceny complaints!
http://www.mediaweek.com/mediaweek/headlines/article_display.jsp?vnu_con...
In an appearance before Congress in February ... Federal Communications Commission chairman Michael Powell laid some startling statistics on U.S. senators.
The number of indecency complaints had soared dramatically to more than 240,000 in the previous year, Powell said. The figure was up from roughly 14,000 in 2002, and from fewer than 350 in each of the two previous years. There was, Powell said, "a dramatic rise in public concern and outrage about what is being broadcast into their homes."
What Powell did not reveal -- apparently because he was unaware -- was the source of the complaints. According to a new FCC estimate obtained by Mediaweek, nearly all indecency complaints in 2003 -- 99.8 percent -- were filed by [Brent Bozell's] the Parents Television Council, an activist group.
It really is about nothing, in one sense--an absolute "who cares" moment--but it's hard to feel sorry for these two jackasses. Leaving aside whether it was offensive or not, it wasn't even funny, just stupid and pointless. Without the assistance of the media that is being deplored here, they wouldn't even have a career.
Russell Brand is a talentless git. I'm just happy he's not got a slot on BBC6 any longer.
I know for a fact that, while the Brits are much more sensible than we are on just about everything, saying "fuck" is a no-no on BBC broadcasts.
Also, you may remember him as the English boyfriend of Kristen Bell in "Forgetting Sarah Marshall." Posted by: fumphis
Not likely since I think only about 17 people saw the movie.
Jeff II says:
Russell Brand is a talentless git. I'm just happy he's not got a slot on BBC6 any longer.
I know for a fact that, while the Brits are much more sensible than we are on just about everything, saying "fuck" is a no-no on BBC broadcasts.
Make up your mind, are you English or American? In one paragraph you say git, and only English people are supposed to say git (just doesn't sound right in a non-English accent, just like "bloody"), in the next you imply you're American. Which is it?
Anyway, Russel strikes me as a talented actor and, frequently, a funny stand-up, but having checked out some of his radio programs and now this, I don't get his radio host style. Too hyper, not funny.
Submitted by Robert Waldmann (not verified) on Fri Oct. 31, 2008 3:06 PM PDT.
What the fuck are you doing using a work like "fuckup" ? If the fucking Mail on Sunday finds out, you will be totally fucked. The head of Mother Jones will have to cut short his or her vacation in Tuscany to deal with the resulting shitstorm.
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