Toby Hadoke addresses some issues he has with the media’s coverage of television, actors, terminology, and ultimately about the lack of respect for the profession and the art:<\/p>\n
Revelling in ignorance about the medium you write about seems bizarre \u2013 especially when such ignorance is used to recommend somebody but, with a little implicit criticism, keep them in their place at the same time (and to what end \u2013 apart from to make the journalist look clever?).<\/p>\n
Looking clever feels terrific when you\u2019re reviewing something, and it\u2019s fantastic if you can enliven your prose with a witty barb or sparkly turn of phrase \u2026 but these things now seem to have replaced the real reasons someone should be writing about their specialist subject. And what reasons are those? Because they love it! Because they are entertained by entertainers, thrilled by popular culture \u2013 inspired to put pen to paper and to place bum on seat.<\/p>\n
All of the above examples simply wouldn\u2019t happen in other industries… You wouldn\u2019t pay a food writer who described an aubergine as a \u201csort of rubbish sausage\u201d so why is popular culture often chronicled and scrutinised by the ill-informed and condescending?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
If I replace ‘cult TV’ in this article with ‘Eurovision’, this is exactly how I feel every May with the coverage that comes out of the UK’s media about the Song Contest. With so many smart writers who know their topic online, surely theres a solution to be found that rewards the writers, the publications, and the readers?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Toby Hadoke addresses some issues he has with the media’s coverage of television, actors, terminology, and ultimately about the lack of respect for the profession and the art: Revelling in ignorance about the medium you write about seems bizarre \u2013 especially when such ignorance is used to recommend somebody but, with a little implicit criticism, keep them in their place at the same time (and to what end \u2013 apart from to make the journalist look clever?). Looking clever feels terrific when you\u2019re reviewing something, and it\u2019s fantastic if you can enliven your prose with a witty barb or sparkly<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[36,392,25,576],"tags":[4780,5498,1057,445,1905,199],"class_list":["post-8259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-doctor-who","category-eurovision-multimedia","category-link-log","category-mainstream-media","tag-critic","tag-doctor-who","tag-journalism","tag-review","tag-toby-hadoke","tag-tv","comments-off"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p58Gl0-29d","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8259\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}