The sofa bounces back
MEDIA
Alan Fisher defends GMTV against Kenneth Roy’s elitist attack
I’m disappointed in Kenneth Roy. I thought he was smarter. I thought he avoided the clichés, but in the last edition of the Scottish Review he went tramping where the snobby media classes have beaten a well-worn path over the last 16 years and dismissed the GMTV sofa as an insignificant piece of journalistic fluff – a place where politicians go to boost their poll ratings while avoiding the tough questions. And as we would expect, he cleverly uses language to build up that image: ‘cooed over by one of the many GMTV blondes’, ‘a serious alternative to the GMTV sofa’.
And here’s where I’ll challenge Kenneth. I suspect he’s made his assumptions without ever watching the programme at length, preferring instead to stick with his former employers, the BBC. So what did he say that got me so riled up? He described Britain’s favourite breakfast programme as frivolous, avoiding anything that’s too posh, too bright or too serious. This he insisted was dumbing down.
So let me lay my cards on the table. I worked for GMTV for 13 years. Three in Belfast during the final years of ‘The Troubles’; four as senior news correspondent based in London covering stories as diverse as the wars in the Balkans, the Rwandan genocide and the Dunblane massacre. And then I spent six years as chief correspondent. This included 10 weeks in Baghdad in the run-up to the last Gulf war, a three-part series on poverty in Africa and an investigation into holiday clubs in Spain which were defrauding ordinary people out of their money with wild claims. All trivial stuff obviously.
Kenneth made the mistake of believing that because GMTV covers Hollywood gossip that it cannot then deal with the serious or carry out the important political interview, believing everything must be done with a Paxman sneer.
The political elite has tried to play up the triviality of the GMTV sofa. Alastair Campbell once remarked during a Downing Street briefing: ‘The prime minister appeared on the GMTV sofa this morning and we discovered his favourite colour was red’. It was a great piece of deflection from the spinmaster, yet he knew this was a way of getting his message out to a huge cross section of the community.
It’s easy to write-off GMTV, but around five million people watch the eight o’clock bulletin every morning. The more ‘worthy’ Channel 4 News sometimes hits a million, Newsnight would love to get that many viewers. GMTV draws people in. it is more inclusive than many news and current affairs programmes. If viewers tune in for the latest news about Michael Jackson but find out something more on the expenses scandal, on government foreign policy or the latest utterances from Barack Obama, then the station has done its job. It’s made people a little bit smarter about the world around them.
Ben Sheppard presents entertainment programmes as well as sitting on the GMTV sofa but his grilling of Alistair Darling during the financial crisis was one of the best I’ve seen. He simply wouldn’t let the chancellor fob him off and insistently demanded answers to his questions. Darling looked rattled and the moment was replayed on other news outlets and reported in the ‘serious’ papers the following morning. John Stapleton remains one of the most accomplished anchors in British television and his coverage from Westminster on the morning that Gordon Brown’s premiership hung by a thread was informative and masterful. Sue Jamieson – a GMTV blonde no less – is still one of the tightest writers in television and can make even the most complex subject accessible. She handles stories with intelligence and humour.
While Kenneth is right to praise the work of the Daily Telegraph, it’s wrong to dismiss GMTV as trivial. In an era where most programmes are forced into ‘narrowcasting’ to find an audience, it covers a broad church. And people like it. Do I watch other news? Yes. Do I look for more detail, more analysis, and more foreign news? Yes, because I can. GMTV still gives me a full five-minute round-up on the main stories in the morning which is why I tune in.
Lord John Reith was a serious Scotsman, the first director general of the BBC. He might not have approved of GMTV but it meets his demands. It educates, entertains and informs and that’s not something to be sneered at.
BRITAIN’S
REAL
EPIDEMIC
Comment:
Kenneth Roy on slow roads to fast deaths
[click here]
STUDENTS: THE NEW CUSTOMERS
Education:
Jill Stephenson deplores the corruption of
our universities
[click here]
A NATION OF
SPIVS
Society:
Walter Humes on how wide boys are now
in charge
[click here]
HERE
IS THE
LAW
Photo essay:
Islay McLeod takes a lofty view of Dundee
[click here]
THE
BARE PLATFORM
Travel:
Sheila Hetherington on a memory of Adlestrop
[click here]
The Scottish Review
is published on
Tuesday and Thursday
Missed the
last edition?
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Coming soon
in the
Scottish Review
ACROSS
THE
MINCH
Islay McLeod’s Hebridean journey:
from the
Butt of Lewis
to Barra
Her photographic record of summer in the Western Isles starts next Tuesday
