The Media & Their Narratives.

[BIAD]

Surely the BBC would not even entertain the notion of suppressing the video of themselves getting called out and reamed! That would smack of censorship and narrative control!

Oh, they think they're masters of it!

One of the main problems is when 'news' -that enigmatic item that cannot be favourable to everyone, is so distilled
down to fit a snappy schedule and designed for emote purposes, the reality of a situation gets lost in the need to be
a competitive information outlet. Then with basic framework of an incident being so badly damaged, a reconstruction
can be made where advantageous perspectives can be promoted that are entirely different from the genuineness of
the original situation.

There are theatrical agencies that have people on their books who can portray and enunciate in a certain manner to
catch the eye or have the faculty to entice an audience to listen to them. These people aren't actors in the normal
sense of what the public perceive, the internet calls them 'shills'... individuals who pose as a genuine person who
entice or encourage an observer/viewer/listener to absorb a preferred narrative.

A recent example of this trickery to appeal to an audience in the media business is the speech impediment -a lisp.
It became vogue for a while for 'on-the-scene drop-in reporters' to explain a situation deemed news-worthy
with this impairment and certain outlets deemed the disorder helpful via a belief that an audience would equate
an assumed 'weakness' with honesty.

Hence, the media constantly create divisions of people and categorise some as privileged or disadvantaged,
whichever is needed to push a narrative. But the illusory business of televised news-vending believes a visual
or an audio difference is required for an audience to be able to distinguish what information is worth to be
concerned about.

So a person with a speech impediment -audio, a person who isn't Caucasian or has a physical disability -visual,
should be deemed as a 'average-person-on-the-street' and not the usual 'white guy in the nice suit behind the
brightly-lit news desk.' People of colour, a ginger-haired person, folk with disabilities and those with what we've
been spoon-fed as substandard personal management skills are supposed to reflect the down-trodden and as
the public are steadily told, they are you and me.

But isn't that defeating the purpose of convincing the public that they can trust the established media? -I hear
you ask.

No, the counterfeit power resides in the belief that an audience's attention span is short and will never take the
time to evaluate the conflicting paradigms that are presented. Past generations were trained from an early age
to accept that a loud voice must carry a noble narrative and it just wouldn't be morally upright to stand out from
the crowd and proclaim something untrue. Who'd dare do that?!

We all have weaknesses, we all have failings, presenting someone with equal -or worse, deficiencies than what is
accepted media's version of the average person can supposedly work. This ruse naturally plays to our forgiving
disposition and ergo, there's a fair chance the preferred narrative gets across to its target.

After all, surely a shady cutthroat no-nonsense news company wouldn't hire people who are not conducive to the
archetypal heroic figures seen in movies unless they are genuine people with an important message to absorb...
would they?

Forget common sense and forget that this all seems ludicrous, when one takes the King's shilling and steps
through the looking-glass into the competitive world of entertaining for money, what Joe Public deems as
normal stops at the door of such businesses. The word 'entertainment' is interchangeable with the noun
'distraction'.


.....................................................

And as for the BBC...

BBC wildlife show fakery rows: How broadcaster has faced backlash for making up scenes in nature
documentaries including using film of a polar bear giving birth inside a ZOO

*BBC cameraman Hamza Yassin says wildlife documentary scenes are often faked
*Claims this makes viewers feel more 'emotional' about threats to natural world

'BBC cameraman Hamza Yassin has claimed wildlife TV documentary scenes are often faked to make
viewers feel more 'emotional' about threats to the natural world. The Strictly Come Dancing winner said
dramatic moments are invented and scenes manipulated to encourage viewers to 'do something' about
environmental issues.

But the revelation is far from the first time the corporation has been under the spotlight for making up or
doctoring scenes in nature documentaries.

The BBC has faced a series of fakery rows over the past few decades – with the most famous in 2011
when it was revealed scenes in Frozen Planet which apparently showed a polar bear giving birth in the
wild were actually shot in a Dutch zoo. It also recreates sound effects in its wildlife shows in a studio,
but has insisted that this is an industry-wide practice and is because animal sounds would otherwise
be difficult for viewers to hear above the rest of the ambient noise in a landscape.


Everyone Is Involved.

The polar bear scene from 2011 was in episode five of the BBC's £16million Frozen Planet series which
featured tiny polar bears mewling and nuzzling for milk from their mother. Eight million viewers believed
that the scenes were shot by cameramen who had endured sub-zero temperatures in an underground
cave in the arctic wilderness.

The scenes, however, had been shot in a mocked up cave made of plaster and wood and in a zoo
enclosure in Holland using fake snow. The footage was defended at the time by presenter Sir David
[Attenborough], who compared nature documentaries to 'making movies'.

But the following year, when the Africa documentary series came out, the BBC made it clearer when
footage had not been filmed in the wild with warnings that 'controlled filming' had been used.
While the polar bear footage was the most famous incident of its kind, it was far from the first time
that BBC shows had been the target of fakery accusations.

In 1997, in the most memorable scene of Polar Bear - Arctic Warrior saw a mother bear was filmed
giving birth to and snuggling with her newborn cub. Viewers were led to believe the scene took place
in the Arctic. In fact, it was filmed in a zoo in Frankfurt.

And in 2001, Sir David was accused of using deceptive techniques in Blue Planet when it included a
lobster spawning scene that was filmed in a British aquarium. Viewers were led to believe the scene
was taking place off the coast of Nova Scotia. Also in 2008, Sir David was accused of staging a
confrontation between himself and a cobra in a South African desert for the series, Life in Cold Blood.

More recently in August 2019, the Serengeti series featured a scene showing a baby zebra struggling
through crocodile-infested waters – which the Sunday Times revealed was in fact a 'composite' of
multiple clips edited together. Shown in episode four, 'Misfortune', the young Zebra was seen
desperately swimming through a rushing river right next to a large crocodile.

It struggled to keep up with its group and, in a second scene, was swept away by the raging current.
Cameraman Doug Allan revealed at the time that the zebra was real and 'did really get carried down
the stream'. But he added: 'Whether the zebra was in that particular bit of water as seen on screen,
who knows. They could be in different places at different times.'

Mr Allan also revealed in 2013 that many wildlife scenes in BBC series are faked, saying that species
'smaller than a baby rabbit' are put in custom-built sets and filmed under controlled conditions, rather
than in the wild.

In October 2017, it was revealed that Blue Planet II viewers would not be told which scenes were filmed
in laboratories rather than the wild. Sir David's programme included close-up lab footage of corals bleaching,
which could only be filmed with lights and specialist cameras.

Producers for the show also recreated a rock pool and the burrow of a zebra mantis shrimp for close-up shots.
And a terrifying-looking fangtooth was filmed in a special chamber on a ship after samples were taken from
the deep ocean, according to The Guardian.

But the source of the footage was not made clear to viewers during the show, with executive producer
James Honeyborne saying at the time: 'You can't just break the spell.' He also insisted at the time that
underwater sound effects - which had been criticised by viewers for beibng 'ridiculous', 'awful' and
'nonsensical' - were 'representative' of nature.

Mr Honeyborne said the production team worked extremely hard on audio quality after facing trouble because
sound travels much faster in water than in air. His comments came after some viewers claimed the BBC was
exaggerating sound effects – including a tuskfish hitting a clam against coral - on the programme.

The previous year in November 2016, the BBC revealed that breathtaking Planet Earth II footage that appeared
to show a wild golden eagle's view of a mountainous habitat was actually filmed using a captive bird that lives
in a wildlife sanctuary in France.

The tame eagle, known as Slovak, was filmed swooping over the Alps at speeds of up to 200mph - taking
viewers with it via a 'lipstick' camera strapped to its back. In a video on its website, the BBC confirmed that
Slovak, who resides at the Park les Aigles du Léman, was turned into a cameraman using his professional
bird trainer.

In 2015, it emerged that a volcanic eruption scene in another BBC show, Patagonia: Earth's Secret Paradise,
had also been doctored. Impressive footage claimed to show a 'dirty thunderstorm' during the eruption, with
lightning strikes flashing through a cloud of volcanic ash. But it was in fact made by splicing footage of two
different volcanic eruptions together, one which happened in 2011 and the other in 2015.

Another BBC documentary: Human Planet: Deserts – Life in the Furnace, aired in August 2014, was also
exposed for misleading viewers, when a seemingly savage wolf was revealed to actually be semi-domesticated.
Staff at the corporation were subsequently forced to undergo an 'anti-fakery' course afterwards.

Last week Yassin, 33, who has been touted as the next Sir David Attenborough, said producers often edit
footage in way that will 'make a film that tugs on your heartstrings'.He told the Cheltenham Literature Festival
that documentary makers 'dramatise what we're seeing' and also sometimes pretend parts of the world remain
pristine.

According to the Sunday Telegraph, Yassin said: 'Now, spoiler, we're trying to make a film that tugs on your
heartstrings so that you guys get emotional about it and then you hopefully do something about it. 'The amount
of times we'll film a cheetah family, and she's got three babies, and we just zoom in slightly and crop out the
last baby. And the story goes, 'The mother has lost her baby?'

'Then you bring in a lion from somewhere else, something else, and the lion goes, 'Grrr', and you think,
'Oh, the lion's killed the baby!' 'And then five minutes of drama, then we just zoom back out again and
then you say, 'Ah, it's all a happy story.' No. That didn't happen.

'Sorry to ruin it for you guys but we are dramatising what we're seeing.'
Yassin, who was born in Sudan but moved to the UK as a child, has worked on programmes such as Animal
Park and Countryfile - and more recently his Strictly: Birds of Prey documentary last month...'

Archived Daily Mail Article: