Wednesday 4 November 2009

And if you thought that the newspapers were bad...

Shahar Golan posted this on his frgdr.com blog a couple of weeks ago.



It is an interview with Ada Yonath, Professor of Chemistry at Machon Weizmann, and who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry last month.

Or two interviews with Prof. Yonath

Or one.

As you'll see from the clip, Yonath was interviewed on Channel 10's evening news programme by Miki Haimovich. The interview was then lightly repackaged, and rebroadcast as new the next morning, making it seem that she was being interviewed anew by the breakfast show hosts, Haim Etgar and Sivan Cohen.

It might seem like a small thing. It is Channel 10's content, after all?

I disagree. Nothing would have been lost by re-broadcasting the original interview, Haimovitch and all, the next morning. Except the veneer of 'exclusivity'.

More to the point, I think that this is only a small step away from creating subtlely different questions to fit the answers that Prof. Yonath had helpfully provided earlier.

Which is only a short hop and skip away from creating radically different questions to fit Prof Yonath's answers - and misrepresenting her in the process, of course.

I don't think it is a small thing. If I'd wanted entertainment of this nature, I'd go take out a Woody Allen film. To be honest, I find it rather patronising. Perhaps the editors at Channel 10 rate their viewers so lowly as to think that they can only engage with the news if it is live and direct? It's that 24 Hour rolling news thing again...

Okay, I'm being a grouch this morning. I promise that my next post will be more positive.

Again, hat tip to frgdr.com for pointing out the chicanery on the part of Channel 10.and setting up the clip. I didn't notice it. I mean, it isn't like I'd be paying attention to the news in Hebrew...

6 comments:

Adam Ehad said...

How the hell did they think they would get away with that?

x said...

Beats me.

Tim said...

Ah, the wonderful ways of the meedja - nothing is ever quite as it seems. I have to say this is standard operating practice, though. The BBC will quite commonly edit and reuse interviews throughout the day's news broadcasts. Channel 10 were just being a little more blatant about it.

Davka, I quite like C10. Or rather, I find it less irritating than 1 or 2 ;)

x said...

You are right about the BBC, Tim. I guess they assume that no one is bored enough to watch more than one bulletin in a 24 hour period :-)

Channel 10 is OK, I agree. If for no other reason, every second programme on Channel 2 features Avri Gilad...

thebookmistress said...

Channel 10 is OK, I agree. If for no other reason, every second programme on Channel 2 features Avri Gilad...

Based on that, I assumed Avri Gilad is some hot chick on the lines of Yonit Levi. Now I am just confused.

x said...

Nah, I meant that I avoid Channel 2 because every second programme seems to feature Avri Gilad. He's a personable enough fellow, I guess, but probably just a bit too overexposed. He does the Breakfast Show, 1 V 100 ( a quiz show), a talk show, lots of commercials...