Tele Talk - part 2

You thought I would forget.  Well, I haven’t.  Yet.  

2. Balancing act

One thing that came as a surprise to me, naïve little libertarian that I am, was that the main TV channels (we are talking about the Spanish equivalent of the BBC here, not just some random channel that no one watches) are state funded.  As in, funded by the Government.  As you can imagine, this is not really all that conducive to balanced and unbiased broadcasting.  If there is a change of governing party (right to left or vice versa) the spin (I will use that term because, lets be honest, that is what it is) of a certain news topic can change direction so fast it’ll give you whiplash.  Someone who yesterday was persona non gracia suddenly becomes the flavour of the month. This also works the other way round.  Evil to good, good to evil.

As a result, I watch news coverage on TVE with a pinch of salt, change channels and compare it to other news coverage on other commercially funded channels.  Then, just for fun, I watch the British news coverage and compare.  I may have too much free time but it is interesting to see how the coverage can really diverge, even between Spanish channels.  

Not that I give more credence to the commercially funded channels either, it is just an interesting comparative exercise.  Neither am I saying that the UK news coverage is always the best or unbiased, no way.  For me, all news reporting should be viewed through the prism of scepticism; what is the story, who will benefit, why break it now, what other ‘smaller’ news stories are being obscured? Etc etc.  

Funnily enough, the tendency to bias I have noted here doesn’t just apply to state-funded TV, or to the news.  Coverage here generally has a bias of some sort or another, explicit or implicit.  Funding affects everything.  Commercial channels would NEVER be able to air (let alone produce) programmes like Top Gear or Watchdog, their commercial ad-space-buying funders just would not allow it.  If they did, you could bet that the car company that spent the most on advertising with the network would have produced the Car of the Year for whichever channel made the show.  

And do not get me started on the Grand Prix coverage.  I think that here the only person who actually races, is Alonso.  The main commentator happens to be rather a good buddy of Señor Alonso, which adds wonderfully to the balanced nature of the broadcasting.  At least an hour is spent on Alonso’s qualifying times, his car, any changes and possibly, what his haircut is like this week and how many times he sneezed on Monday.  Then there is the pesky interference of a couple of hours of racing, in which Alonso comes, well nowhere actually but his every move is scrutinized and breathtaking in its perfection.  After this there will be another 30 minutes of interviewing Alonso along with details of his finishing position and what he will have for dinner.  There is then a 30 second mention of the winner, unless it is Hamilton.  If that should occur, apparently, nobody won. Or nobody worth mentioning anyway. 

It could be worse though, it could be Italy. 

p.s. If you don’t know what I am talking about check out Berlusconi’s media holdings and you’ll work it out.