Education

First published in Column 8 on the 24^th February, 1993

I was interested in the Voice of Television’s reaction to the spate of attempted suicides following a recent Shortland Street episode depicting just such an attempt.

The Voice of TV proclaimed that they’d discussed the proposed storyline with those who know, and that it had all been done in the best possible way.

The Voice of Television always claims they have the best of intentions, and because they keep on claiming it they seem to think they can never be wrong.

Certainly, the producers of Shortland Street couldn’t know that several people would attempt suicide in consequence of a story on their programme. Certainly it cannot be said that they caused those people to attempt suicide.

What bugs me is the way they exonerate themselves time after time, especially when they imply that television has no effect on people’s lives whatsoever.

Yet all the advertising on television is intended to do exactly that: affect our lives.

You can’t have it both ways. If 10 to 15 seconds of top-notch advertising is expected to change the way we think, how much more effect must powerful or violent or emotionally charged programmes have?

If music hath the power to soothe or rage, and if paintings can arouse violence, and if the written word can bring about revolutions, then it only stands to reason that all encompassing media such as movies and television must affect our inner beings.

The cinematic media is by far the most impacting of all the arts. It can’t help but be; so much of it is real and involving.

When television was still a twinkle in the eye of its creators, they considered that this medium could be the finest educational tool ever invented. And it still could be. Unfortunately what is thrown at us night after night on the public box is for the most part educational in quite the wrong way.

The world presented on television is one in which morality has been largely thrown aside; in which it is immaterial whether evil or good triumph; in which religion is either mocked or treated with high disdain; in which those in authority are seldom treated objectively, but rather as though the interviewers had some hidden agenda intended to drag them down.

And in spite of complaints, the Voice of Television seldom appears to come out in the wrong. Few voices can compete with its power.

How long have people complained about the amount of violence spewing out of the box each day? Yet the Voice of Television says there is no corollary between what appears on the box and what happens in real life.

John Kennedy reports in an article in the ODT that pornography is pouring into Britain via cable, at the same time as the British wonder how to control sexual violence stalking the land. How different is New Zealand?

When our television automatically switched on to a programme the other night after we’d finished watching a video, we were straightway thrust into a scene of sexual violence on a subway train. Those few moments of graphic horror immediately imprinted on the brain.

Unless I’m vastly different from everyone else, I find such images churn around in my head, as countless others continue to do that I wish I’d never exposed my mind to.

What then do they imprint on the mind of someone who delights to dwell on them?

Sir James Shelley, one-time director of broadcasting, is quoted as saying, ‘There was once a wicked lady called Circe, who was reputed to turn human beings into swine. The object of broadcasting should be the exact opposite.’

Can the Voice of Television sincerely agree?

Cartoon by Ed Gamble