Dishonesty in television may arise from lofty principle: but it still bears the devil’s fingerprint

A columnist should rejoice, I suppose, when an issue he has spotted early and returned to often suddenly catches fire, becoming the hot topic of the season. I started writing about dishonesty in television about ten years ago, wrote often about it for the Times, and made a programme for BBC Radio 5 Live with precisely this focus.

From magazine issue: 01 September 2007

issue 01 September 2007

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Matthew Parris

Dishonesty in television may arise from lofty principle: but it still bears the devil’s fingerprint
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My concern was born of direct personal experience. There was something rotten in the business of television programme-making, and it was endemic in the ethos of the small screen rather than (as TV bosses often prefer to insist) the influence of ‘a few bad apples’.

I have written about this now more times than I can remember, and come at it from many angles: repeating (because it has never quite caught the public imagination and I keep hoping that with one more heave it will) the same argument.