Panorama Manipulates the Drama

 Last night the BBC’s Panorama managed to set a new low in political film making. Climate Chaos was previewed as an investigation into how George Bush’s Presidency suppresses information on global warming. Now am I the only one who remembers May’s Vanity Fair doing exactly the same? But let’s leave that to one side for now.

Last night the BBC’s Panorama managed to set a new low in how a political film making. Climate Chaos was previewed as an investigation into how George Bush’s Presidency suppresses information on global warming. Now am I the only one who remembers May’s Vanity Fair doing exactly the same? But let’s leave that to one side for now.

We should be worried about what Panorama does because the BBC is still the most powerful single media organisation in the world. It’s reflective attitude, i.e. what it thinks it is doing and what it says its objectives are, counts even if its reports are bad. And when you watch programmes like this getting the morality wrong you have to say, that’s why audiences are looking around for something new.

Here was a film about the most powerful man in the world that used spaghetti western music (Once Upon a Time in the West, the Good, the Bad, the Ugly) as a soundtrack. Now a lack of  deference is a good thing but coupled with this music mischief, it makes you want to ask: Who allows that kind of subliminal manipulation of reportage? Reportage or investigation are important contracts with the public. It’s like saying, listen to me now because I’m the honest guy in town and I won’t try any tricks.

So don’t do it.

Apart from that dubious attack on the viewer’s sensibilities, Panorama used an actor reading from a confidential report. The man was made up and lit to look satanic.

I hate what Bush is doing on the environment but when I watch programmes engineered to make me despise him I want to offer the guy my support.

On the programme Panoarma also hitched a ride on Vanity Fair’s coverage of the Appalachian open cast mining catastrophe. In West Virginia they are taking a mountain away because it contains huge amounts of coal. It’s wrong. But it has nothing to do with this programme and its inclusion was gratutious.

And those references to Dick Cheney and Halliburton and Bush’s other big oil contacts – please. We have not been asleep for the past five years.

Finally the Appalachian story did elicit in passing the acknowledgement that Bush’s administration is investing heavily in clean coal technology – here at last is the beginning of a current affairs story. Yes, oil may have peaked and coal is back, a very important fact for British people to be aware of. The cheer leader for big oil, is in fact histories largest spender on coal. Or Global Warming – how and why did Blair miscalculate his relationship with Bush?

I can see stories galore in Bush and the environment but this one not only felt like treading in old footsteps. It created a sense of weariness, the fact that the current affairs’ flagship was flying on the wrong boat again.