You couldn't make it up dept. no.33: All Britain is talking about it

[fpb]

And sniggering. A couple of days ago, a BBC TV show invited an expert on internet economics to discuss recent developments. Owing to some sort of mix-up, they showed into the studio, not the expert, but the cabbie who had driven him in. The cabbie had no idea what was going on, but, with years of experience on the road chatting to all sorts of customers, he acquitted himself quite well.

Morale no.1: what with the constant pressure on employees, the privatization, casualization, and increasingly temporary nature of jobs, professional skills are dying out and being replaced by a despair to get the product out no matter what.

Morale no.2: 50% of being an expert is, and has always been, a matter of being able to bullshit your way through a situation. Especially on TV.

Comments

[dreamer-marie.livejournal.com]

Gigglesnortsnigger indeed. The problem is, some random people who happened to be in the neighbourhood probably got fired in order to maintain the image of the BBC...

[fpb.livejournal.com]

As much as I loathe the BBC, I do not think this will be the case. They are not yet as brutalized as a great deal of private big business is. On the surface at least, they have made a great joke of it and been the first to laugh at themselves - where do you think I first heard of it? And I think this did something to blunt the inevitable attacks from the BBC's sworn enemies, especially the Rupert Murdoch empire. I was quite surprised to see that his SUN newspaper only had the story in an inside page, and pretty much as a joke. If they had tried to cover it up, let alone sack people, Murdoch would have been all over them.

[goreism.livejournal.com]

Hah! Is there a video or a transcript online somewhere?

[bufo-viridis.livejournal.com]

Truth is, unless the journalist has really made his homework - very rare case - and the program has a very clearly designed formula - even rarer occurence - the dscussions are so shallo that almost any reasonably intelligent person, who reads newspapers and doesn't forget the words in front of camera, can make a pretty good expert.
I had one occasion to "play an expert" - I was given two hours for preparing, one and three quarters of which I used for extracting the questions from the journalist.
I had five minutes in front of camera and was supposed to describe "developments in PRC foreign politics in the last 10 years". No bloody kidding.
Had they warned me day before I'd be even able to prepare a few interesting facts, but...

[sporty233.livejournal.com]

As sad as it is, I think it is pretty funny! And it shows in a drastic way in the direction TV goes.. The people, who are watching TV are often not interested in hardcore (boring) facts...so everybody can bullshit around! It is particularly so with the private channels..at least it is in Germany so.. Look at the shows who are successful..shows as "Big Brother" etc.. I am quite surprised that it hit the BBC.. I thought they are more of a serious channel.. :O

[(Anonymous)]

Oh, I'd have loved to have seen that! Which programme was it? I'm going to have to start watching TV again. :-)

[fpb.livejournal.com]

It was somewhere on BBC News 24.