Benefits and Cheats
Jan. 8th, 2014 08:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jazzy_daveLast evening on catch-up I watched that Benefits Street TV show and I found it to be biased and infuriating. Many unemployed people are not benefit cheats and I know plenty that desperately want to work. I get fed up with people on benefits all being tarred with the same brush, when if you look at the facts, there are more people on benefits who are working than are not, simply because wages are so low and because many many employers only take on part time staff so they do not have to pay National Insurance even though the companies are making millions. Isn't it a pity that nobody does an in -depth series about the companies and people who scrounge far more from this country by evading paying BILLIONS in tax.
Until the Conservatives used the "hard working families" phrase to describe all the people they approved of as opposed to those that need help, and that Labour also took it up, this type of discrimination was never heard of. According to those in the house of commons and many who believe the rubbish written in papers and shown on TV the benefit claimant is the scum of the earth and must live in poverty. Getting back to this programme the majority of people living in this street were on some sort of benefit but we only saw a small minority of the people who live there.
TV production companies like 'Love Productions' epitomize the reality-TV zeitgeist that has plagued television content for over a decade now. Reality TV, an oxymoron if ever there was one, is not interested in elucidating the facts about anything it purports to 'investigate'; it's sole broadcasting remit is to deceive both the participants and the target-audiences (usually very gullible ones!) of the programmes it produces; this deception is necessary in order to distort reality, if not to manufacture or fabricate it even, so as to pander to the lowest common denominator-audience -the target demographic who are least able to think critically and just believe whatever story, or anecdotal gossip they may have overheard on the street corner, or have read in the gutter press.
So Reality TV reinforces and fuels existing misconceptions and bigotry; it is the ultimate dumbing-down of otherwise extremely complex issues that warrant serious and investigative journalism; but such journalism is expensive because it necessitates contracting high-calibre reporters, researching a wider socio-economic content-source market, and by extension, committing more production time; but the most riskiest factor of all, from a Reality TV producers Machiavellian perspective, is that intelligent documentaries risk alienating a stupid and credulous audience, and if that happens, the likes of 'Luurve' Productions (what an asinine brand-name!) would lose advertising revenue etc.
Another constituent ingredient common to the Reality TV model is its commercial imperative to *entertain* an audience -and to entertain them in the most voyeuristic way that current public taste will sanction- rather than seeking to *educate* them by relating objective facts, hence enabling informed and critical judgement; they further facilitate this voyeuristic 'pantomime' by insulting the dignity of the programmes' hapless participants -who are typically duped into taking part themselves, as has been patently demonstrated by the B'ham Mail's report - and then sending-them-up through vicious misrepresentation via heavy editing.
Sadly, the majority of the UK's media platforms, including the BBC and Channel 4, are only too happy to commission this inane crap in order to compete for viewer market-share, although the Beeb retains some of its journalistic integrity via its radio shows and a handful of television programmes.
Clearly then, the default 'gutter-media' appears hell-bent on perpetuating the stereotypical myths surrounding impoverished communities in Britain's cities by portraying them in a negatively skewed light, and by distorting, tweaking and manipulating reality to suit their own commercial agendas.
My advice, to the good residents of Winson Green: initiate legal proceedings immediately, and engage local, national, and if necessary, the international courts to shut these DESPICABLE Reality TV producers DOWN!!!
Of course, everyone feels strongly about people who abuse and defraud welfare services, whom are typically of the minority, but we should also feel strongly about people who are quick to point the finger, without having all the facts at their disposal, or who've been manipulated by moronic reality TV shows that attempt to masquerade as responsible journalism. Whose producing any documentaries exposing the multinational corporations who are defrauding the UK government out of billions of pounds via off-shored tax evasion and corrupted government collusion? Who is reporting about the one TRILLION POUNDS that was expropriated from the public purse to bail out a cabal of transnational banks who through sheer greed and short-term financial strategies caused the collapse of the entire global economy!
Until the Conservatives used the "hard working families" phrase to describe all the people they approved of as opposed to those that need help, and that Labour also took it up, this type of discrimination was never heard of. According to those in the house of commons and many who believe the rubbish written in papers and shown on TV the benefit claimant is the scum of the earth and must live in poverty. Getting back to this programme the majority of people living in this street were on some sort of benefit but we only saw a small minority of the people who live there.
TV production companies like 'Love Productions' epitomize the reality-TV zeitgeist that has plagued television content for over a decade now. Reality TV, an oxymoron if ever there was one, is not interested in elucidating the facts about anything it purports to 'investigate'; it's sole broadcasting remit is to deceive both the participants and the target-audiences (usually very gullible ones!) of the programmes it produces; this deception is necessary in order to distort reality, if not to manufacture or fabricate it even, so as to pander to the lowest common denominator-audience -the target demographic who are least able to think critically and just believe whatever story, or anecdotal gossip they may have overheard on the street corner, or have read in the gutter press.
So Reality TV reinforces and fuels existing misconceptions and bigotry; it is the ultimate dumbing-down of otherwise extremely complex issues that warrant serious and investigative journalism; but such journalism is expensive because it necessitates contracting high-calibre reporters, researching a wider socio-economic content-source market, and by extension, committing more production time; but the most riskiest factor of all, from a Reality TV producers Machiavellian perspective, is that intelligent documentaries risk alienating a stupid and credulous audience, and if that happens, the likes of 'Luurve' Productions (what an asinine brand-name!) would lose advertising revenue etc.
Another constituent ingredient common to the Reality TV model is its commercial imperative to *entertain* an audience -and to entertain them in the most voyeuristic way that current public taste will sanction- rather than seeking to *educate* them by relating objective facts, hence enabling informed and critical judgement; they further facilitate this voyeuristic 'pantomime' by insulting the dignity of the programmes' hapless participants -who are typically duped into taking part themselves, as has been patently demonstrated by the B'ham Mail's report - and then sending-them-up through vicious misrepresentation via heavy editing.
Sadly, the majority of the UK's media platforms, including the BBC and Channel 4, are only too happy to commission this inane crap in order to compete for viewer market-share, although the Beeb retains some of its journalistic integrity via its radio shows and a handful of television programmes.
Clearly then, the default 'gutter-media' appears hell-bent on perpetuating the stereotypical myths surrounding impoverished communities in Britain's cities by portraying them in a negatively skewed light, and by distorting, tweaking and manipulating reality to suit their own commercial agendas.
My advice, to the good residents of Winson Green: initiate legal proceedings immediately, and engage local, national, and if necessary, the international courts to shut these DESPICABLE Reality TV producers DOWN!!!
Of course, everyone feels strongly about people who abuse and defraud welfare services, whom are typically of the minority, but we should also feel strongly about people who are quick to point the finger, without having all the facts at their disposal, or who've been manipulated by moronic reality TV shows that attempt to masquerade as responsible journalism. Whose producing any documentaries exposing the multinational corporations who are defrauding the UK government out of billions of pounds via off-shored tax evasion and corrupted government collusion? Who is reporting about the one TRILLION POUNDS that was expropriated from the public purse to bail out a cabal of transnational banks who through sheer greed and short-term financial strategies caused the collapse of the entire global economy!
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