Dumbed-Down Britain

One thing we do agree with the defenders of the BBC about is that standards in broadcasting are important.  They have an impact on, and reflect, society-at-large.  Over the last 30 years or so since the liberalisation of broadcasting in Britain and with the development of new technologies, production values have improved greatly.  Over this same period, the intellectual content of broadcasting in Britain has declined sharply.

Is there some sort of causative relationship between the two trends?  Is it the case that as broadcasting has become sharper and more polished, it has also declined in literacy and seriousness and become less informative and less substantial in output?  If so, does this reflect wider decline in society, especially in the academy and schools?

These are complex questions and we're not sociologists.  What we will say is that a simple comparison between the content of broadcasts of 30 years ago with those of today can be illuminating.

Here's an example involving a controversial figure in British politics, Sir Oswald Mosley.  The interview takes place on Thames Television, so showing this clip serves a further important purpose: we can also see if the private television stations are able to uphold high standards in the same way the BBC supposedly did and does:

What's striking about that interview, if you watch it and listen carefully, is the sophistication and intelligence of both interviewer and interviewee. It's like a different world compared to what we're used to today. The interviewer even manages a quote from Yeats, and Sir Oswald bats that away effortlessly and treats us to some classical history. It's sad when you think how dumbed-down we are now. Today's politicians are academically, emotionally and intellectually like juveniles in comparison.

In an effort to demonstrate the point, here's an interview with another 'blast from the past', one Anthony Blair:

There seems to be no comparison.  Today's politicians are salesmen.  The diction is a mixture of soundbites, jargon and Newspeak strung together in whatever is the narrative.