5 ms·

I once interpreted for a crew recording "man on the street" interviews. I had no experience working in TV, I was a last minute replacement. At the beginning of

I once interpreted for a crew recording "man on the street" interviews. I had no experience working in TV, I was a last minute replacement. At the beginning of the day, the producer listed the opinions he wanted to get. "Ok, we'll get a middle aged guy who says this, a younger couple saying something along these lines". He knew exactly what he wanted at the start of the day. There were three camera crews working most of the day getting interviews. I get the feeling that with a bit of editing you could have make "the public" have pretty much any view on a topic that you want.

alfiedotwtf 5y ago
> I get the feeling that with a bit of editing you could have make "the public" have pretty much any view on a topic that you want. Watching Meerkat Manor when I was younger taught me that any narrative can be archived with a bit of editing
ekianjo 5y ago
It's journalism by selective editing. Fairly widespread practice.
- pessimizer 5y ago
  The extremely budget modern version is the "Public Reacts" article that's a few paragraphs of bare editorial followed by 6-12 tweets with about 6-12 likes each.
- LAC-Tech 5y ago
  Fairly widespread is undercutting it. It's universal practice. People hold journalists to crazy high standards of integrity and soothsaying, and the older I get the more it boggles the mind that grown adults still cling on to this. Journalists work for private corporations who write things for a target audience to make money. That's all there is to it.
  - jlawson 5y ago
    It's not just about money for the journalists themselves. Visit a journalism school and you'll find very few students there looking to maximize their earnings. It's a lot like other fields such as science or arts. People entering these careers knowlingly accept low pay and/or difficult working conditions in exchange for other kinds of satisfaction. For some it's intellectual curiosity; for others its artistic ambition or applause. For journalists, it's the psychological satisfication of using political influence to spread their beliefs to others. The actions of journalists cannot be understood according to a simple profit model. (The actions of their bosses can - they hire journos who will accept low pay, with the implicit exchange that those journos can use the position to satisfy their activist impulses. Fanatics work for cheap.)
  - Cthulhu_ 5y ago
    > Journalists work for private corporations who write things for a target audience to make money. That's all there is to it. Not universally true. There's some big corporations like News Corp that from a top level are in it to make money and push a right-wing narrative, but lower down there's a lot of journalists that do things for the public good. Think about the journalists that handled Snowden and Manning's revelations, think Wikileaks, think the journalists that got footage from Gitmo proving the US is committing war crimes, think those that reported on the Panama and Paradise Papers, on Epstein and 'the elite's pedophile rings, the list goes on. These people have risked and sometimes lost their freedoms and their lives. Would you do that if it was just about money? Or are you just projecting your own motivators in life?
  - denton-scratch 5y ago
    > Journalists work for private corporations Indeed - that's the drift of Manufacturing Consensus. To add to that: TV journalism is a form of entertainment, especially sofa-chat news-lite and vox-pop. Vox-pop, especially, is always manipulative. Interviewees always seem to be idiots, because audiences don't want to feel more stupid than the "man on the street". The information content of a vox-pop segment is zero.
  - dmix 5y ago
    Not sure why you put private in front of corporations. You should try watching the political stuff the public networks put out in Canada.
- threatofrain 5y ago
  The article is accusing Asian Boss of something different - planting a YouTuber for the appearance of an impromptu interview about Taiwan.
iso1210 5y ago
I was at an election briefing at a large media organisation a few years ago, one of the chief editors told the journalists "We can't stop you using vox pops, but please don't use them much" and that (paraphrasing) "they are usually awful, we know they add color but they detract from the story and become the story" Of course "Person confirming stereotype" attracts clicks and shares, is easy to do, and that's good for career progression. Actually finding out what's happening, explaining what it means, the who, what, where, when, why of the story, that's hard. Much easier to say "Mr X thinks this is terrible" Than say "This is terrible because...., but it's good because...."
- nobrains 5y ago
  Man-on-the-street interviews should record the entire footage for transparency, without any cuts, for transparency, so that the audience can know which opinions were kept and which were removed.
  - dagw 5y ago
    so that the audience can know which opinions were kept and which were removed. Let's be honest, you already know that just from the context of the question and which show is doing the interview. If the audience is deceived it's only because they want to be.
  - coreyisthename 5y ago
    And how woefully undereducated and uninformed - or willfully ignorant (maybe even dumb) - a large percentage of the population is.
    - hk__2 5y ago
      > And how woefully undereducated and uninformed - or willfully ignorant (maybe even dumb) - a large percentage of the population is. A couple of people-on-the-street interviews will never ever give you an accurate representation of "a large percentage of the population". Edit: see also this comment- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29889236 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29889236
hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
I was once interviewed for a national TV channel about the security of open and proprietary systems. Since I wanted to present a balanced view, I started with a disclaimer, saying that open source can not be equated with a higher level of security by itself, but then I proceeded to present a couple of arguments about the advantages of open systems, and I specifically stressed the need for crucial communications components (like SSH) to be open. Guess what, it turned out they made a program on "how Linux is less secure than Windows" and cut out my whole interview leaving just the initial disclaimer that, taken out of context, seemed to justify their agenda. From that time on, I refused any kinds of interviews for TV.
- moritonal 5y ago
  Makes you understand the strange verbiage politicians communicate with a little, doesn't it?
- denton-scratch 5y ago
  I've had a similar experience. I'll never submit to a vox-pop interview again; they presented my remarks out of context, and manipulated me.
goldcd 5y ago
Yep Like articles with embedded twitter/reddit posts in them. Sure it gives a primary source for whatever topic/view you want to support - but aside from "one person might think this" is pretty irrelevant.
somedude895 5y ago
I only really noticed this when I watched Making a Murderer on Netflix. After each episode my opinion switched between "They were definitely set up by the police" and "They're definitely guilty." If the show had ended after one or the other episode I would have probably firmly held either view. Definitely impacted the trust I put in any media. Or rather the trust in myself to not be manipulated.
- arcticfox 5y ago
  I'm also there with you, that was quite the roller coaster and impacted my trust fairly deeply. Although the totality of the evidence made that one pretty clear to me after researching further than the show; I felt like there was some bad faith cherry-picking going on, which is extremely effective on me but only while it lasts. A similar series with all the levers cranked to the maximum is "Killer Ratings" on Netflix - just an unbelievable story out of Brazil that left me questioning everything. And that one I couldn't resolve in my head; it still bothers me today.
  - dmix 5y ago
    Another bad Netflix one is “ Under Suspicion: Uncovering the Wesphael Case”. It’s packed full of armchair psychologists and very little factual analysis (and way too long). In the past one could look at just about every Michael Moore documentary ever. It seems if you want to push a fringe or poorly supported narrative on something then there is little better format than pop documentaries.
Lio 5y ago
Yes indeed. During the 1990s I first became aware of this as a comedy trope. Loads of TV shows were using these techniques to make the public say all kinds of crazy shit as if they were widely held opinions. It was funny because back in the 90s it seemed like, well at least to me, that we still trusted journalists and we didn't have social media. So seeing interviews obviously manipulated was funny. I can also remember Charlie Brooker, the Black Mirror guy, showing the same footage from a set up reality TV show[1]. By just using editing he could show the same event but with very different interpretations. Instinctively I think we all know that but seeing it done as demonstration is shocking and fascinating. 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRW1cPGYgoQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRW1cPGYgoQ
ridaj 5y ago
I mean the sad thing about this one is that of all the vox pop content producers, Asian Boss doesn't do nearly the worst manipulation or selective editing. (The worst ones make people sound like idiots, which is unfortunately pretty easy.) Some of their content is genuinely powerful for it and frankly this video on the whole is pretty amazing by the thoughtfulness of the people they interview. It's too bad that they had to arrange something to get a pro-unification viewpoint on camera, but it would've been ok if they'd just owned up to it with a brief caption introducing that person as who they are. The real problem is they didn't do that and I do agree with TFA that it's a bad ethical lapse.

alfiedotwtf 5y ago

> I get the feeling that with a bit of editing you could have make "the public" have pretty much any view on a topic that you want. Watching Meerkat Manor when I was younger taught me that any narrative can be archived with a bit of editing

ekianjo 5y ago

It's journalism by selective editing. Fairly widespread practice.

pessimizer 5y ago
The extremely budget modern version is the "Public Reacts" article that's a few paragraphs of bare editorial followed by 6-12 tweets with about 6-12 likes each.
LAC-Tech 5y ago
Fairly widespread is undercutting it. It's universal practice. People hold journalists to crazy high standards of integrity and soothsaying, and the older I get the more it boggles the mind that grown adults still cling on to this. Journalists work for private corporations who write things for a target audience to make money. That's all there is to it.
- jlawson 5y ago
  It's not just about money for the journalists themselves. Visit a journalism school and you'll find very few students there looking to maximize their earnings. It's a lot like other fields such as science or arts. People entering these careers knowlingly accept low pay and/or difficult working conditions in exchange for other kinds of satisfaction. For some it's intellectual curiosity; for others its artistic ambition or applause. For journalists, it's the psychological satisfication of using political influence to spread their beliefs to others. The actions of journalists cannot be understood according to a simple profit model. (The actions of their bosses can - they hire journos who will accept low pay, with the implicit exchange that those journos can use the position to satisfy their activist impulses. Fanatics work for cheap.)
- Cthulhu_ 5y ago
  > Journalists work for private corporations who write things for a target audience to make money. That's all there is to it. Not universally true. There's some big corporations like News Corp that from a top level are in it to make money and push a right-wing narrative, but lower down there's a lot of journalists that do things for the public good. Think about the journalists that handled Snowden and Manning's revelations, think Wikileaks, think the journalists that got footage from Gitmo proving the US is committing war crimes, think those that reported on the Panama and Paradise Papers, on Epstein and 'the elite's pedophile rings, the list goes on. These people have risked and sometimes lost their freedoms and their lives. Would you do that if it was just about money? Or are you just projecting your own motivators in life?
- denton-scratch 5y ago
  > Journalists work for private corporations Indeed - that's the drift of Manufacturing Consensus. To add to that: TV journalism is a form of entertainment, especially sofa-chat news-lite and vox-pop. Vox-pop, especially, is always manipulative. Interviewees always seem to be idiots, because audiences don't want to feel more stupid than the "man on the street". The information content of a vox-pop segment is zero.
- dmix 5y ago
  Not sure why you put private in front of corporations. You should try watching the political stuff the public networks put out in Canada.
threatofrain 5y ago
The article is accusing Asian Boss of something different - planting a YouTuber for the appearance of an impromptu interview about Taiwan.

iso1210 5y ago

I was at an election briefing at a large media organisation a few years ago, one of the chief editors told the journalists "We can't stop you using vox pops, but please don't use them much" and that (paraphrasing) "they are usually awful, we know they add color but they detract from the story and become the story" Of course "Person confirming stereotype" attracts clicks and shares, is easy to do, and that's good for career progression. Actually finding out what's happening, explaining what it means, the who, what, where, when, why of the story, that's hard. Much easier to say "Mr X thinks this is terrible" Than say "This is terrible because...., but it's good because...."

nobrains 5y ago
Man-on-the-street interviews should record the entire footage for transparency, without any cuts, for transparency, so that the audience can know which opinions were kept and which were removed.
- dagw 5y ago
  so that the audience can know which opinions were kept and which were removed. Let's be honest, you already know that just from the context of the question and which show is doing the interview. If the audience is deceived it's only because they want to be.
- coreyisthename 5y ago
  And how woefully undereducated and uninformed - or willfully ignorant (maybe even dumb) - a large percentage of the population is.
  - hk__2 5y ago
    > And how woefully undereducated and uninformed - or willfully ignorant (maybe even dumb) - a large percentage of the population is. A couple of people-on-the-street interviews will never ever give you an accurate representation of "a large percentage of the population". Edit: see also this comment- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29889236 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29889236

hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago

I was once interviewed for a national TV channel about the security of open and proprietary systems. Since I wanted to present a balanced view, I started with a disclaimer, saying that open source can not be equated with a higher level of security by itself, but then I proceeded to present a couple of arguments about the advantages of open systems, and I specifically stressed the need for crucial communications components (like SSH) to be open. Guess what, it turned out they made a program on "how Linux is less secure than Windows" and cut out my whole interview leaving just the initial disclaimer that, taken out of context, seemed to justify their agenda. From that time on, I refused any kinds of interviews for TV.

moritonal 5y ago
Makes you understand the strange verbiage politicians communicate with a little, doesn't it?
denton-scratch 5y ago
I've had a similar experience. I'll never submit to a vox-pop interview again; they presented my remarks out of context, and manipulated me.

goldcd 5y ago

Yep Like articles with embedded twitter/reddit posts in them. Sure it gives a primary source for whatever topic/view you want to support - but aside from "one person might think this" is pretty irrelevant.

somedude895 5y ago

I only really noticed this when I watched Making a Murderer on Netflix. After each episode my opinion switched between "They were definitely set up by the police" and "They're definitely guilty." If the show had ended after one or the other episode I would have probably firmly held either view. Definitely impacted the trust I put in any media. Or rather the trust in myself to not be manipulated.

arcticfox 5y ago
I'm also there with you, that was quite the roller coaster and impacted my trust fairly deeply. Although the totality of the evidence made that one pretty clear to me after researching further than the show; I felt like there was some bad faith cherry-picking going on, which is extremely effective on me but only while it lasts. A similar series with all the levers cranked to the maximum is "Killer Ratings" on Netflix - just an unbelievable story out of Brazil that left me questioning everything. And that one I couldn't resolve in my head; it still bothers me today.
- dmix 5y ago
  Another bad Netflix one is “ Under Suspicion: Uncovering the Wesphael Case”. It’s packed full of armchair psychologists and very little factual analysis (and way too long). In the past one could look at just about every Michael Moore documentary ever. It seems if you want to push a fringe or poorly supported narrative on something then there is little better format than pop documentaries.

Lio 5y ago

Yes indeed. During the 1990s I first became aware of this as a comedy trope. Loads of TV shows were using these techniques to make the public say all kinds of crazy shit as if they were widely held opinions. It was funny because back in the 90s it seemed like, well at least to me, that we still trusted journalists and we didn't have social media. So seeing interviews obviously manipulated was funny. I can also remember Charlie Brooker, the Black Mirror guy, showing the same footage from a set up reality TV show[1]. By just using editing he could show the same event but with very different interpretations. Instinctively I think we all know that but seeing it done as demonstration is shocking and fascinating. 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRW1cPGYgoQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRW1cPGYgoQ

ridaj 5y ago

I mean the sad thing about this one is that of all the vox pop content producers, Asian Boss doesn't do nearly the worst manipulation or selective editing. (The worst ones make people sound like idiots, which is unfortunately pretty easy.) Some of their content is genuinely powerful for it and frankly this video on the whole is pretty amazing by the thoughtfulness of the people they interview. It's too bad that they had to arrange something to get a pro-unification viewpoint on camera, but it would've been ok if they'd just owned up to it with a brief caption introducing that person as who they are. The real problem is they didn't do that and I do agree with TFA that it's a bad ethical lapse.