The media seems to give some professions free PR - why is this? The most obvious example is the police. There are many TV shows every day showing brilliant detectives using amazing insight to solve difficult cases? Contrast this with the reality - the Madelaine McCann shambles! A related profession has recently got in on the act - forensic science/pathology. I know someone who wants to get into this but apparently it's massively oversubscribed due to all the TV coverage. Who'd have thought so many people wanted to spend their careers cutting up dead people! Other professions that get great PR include medicine (including vets), lawyers, the media (no surprise there), catering and so on.
Of course, all these shows sometimes show bad things happening but, in the main, they paint a very positive image which is often at odds with the experience of their 'customers'.
There is another 'profession' that gets fantastic PR from the media - psychics. When did you last see a show where a psychic turned out to be wrong?
For both points, I would point to The Bill.
Admittedly I haven't watched it for about a year now, but when I was able to watch it regularly, the police were shown in a less than shining light quite regularly. There was even an officer serial killer!
The Bill has also run at least 2 storylines about psychics, and onwe of them was a case of a missing child, about a year and a half ago. The psychic was wrong, and the harm to the family involved was carefully and honestly shown.
I believe also that Casualty has done similar psychic storylines, but let itself down a few months back when the Irish paramedic had a few psychic episodes, one of which involved tying together 2 seemingly random cases, and saving a baby because of it.
I think those professions are easy to write interesting storylines for, a detective solves a mysterious case, a doctor saves a patient from certain death etc. A policeman and a doctors very job is interesting and exciting to other people.
Try and think of a TV plot for a bricklayer, where the story centers on brick laying. You could have a story involving his personal life's up's and downs, but brick laying would be incidental.
I think lots of people do interesting jobs (like scientists, for one) but writers (or more likely editors) have little imagination and they stick to the same old stuff.
I also wonder if there isn't an element of propaganda here. We don't like to think of the police or medical profession as doing a bad job because it would profoundly unsettle society. So they must always be shown, in the end, as being competent. I think people's personal experience of these professions shows that this is not always the case.
I think stories have a much more profound influence on what people believe than you might imagine, given that everyone knows they are just fiction. For instance, people's view of Victorian England is often heavily influenced by Dickens though he was definitely writing to promote a particular view.
Similarly, many people profess not to believe in ghosts but at the same time they will watch ghost stories on TV and suspend disbelief. When they then have an experience they can't explain, they will remember (if only unconsciously) what ghosts are 'supposed' to do and that will influence what they remember of the experience.
People are social animals. When they wath TV they usually want to see people. Jobs like police and doctors are all about interacting with people, so it is easy to get the popular appeal in there and have it actually related to the job. As ZERO says, if you had a show about a bricklayer, the job would be fairly irrelevant because it's boring by itself, you need to put the social aspects in on top. If you think about it, there are actually plenty of shows with lots of different jobs, but you usually don't notice the jobs because that's not the important part.
The other thing they often want is risk and action. Medicine has plenty of risk involved, and although there isn't much action, that can be added by showing how people got injured in the first place. Police obviously have plenty of both.
CSI is a perfect example of this. A few people working together doesn't have quite enough social involvement, so the criminals are often after one of the team or someone involved with them, to add a little extra. Real forensic scientists don't run around shooting people but that means there isn't enough action, so it's added in to make it more appealing.
Lots of jobs are about interacting with people, from social workers to shop assistants. Real police work is a lot different to the heroic stuff shown on TV. If they wanted to show authentic police work it would mainly involve lots of paper work and being attacked by drunken yobs on a Saturday night. I once heard it said, by someone who should know (sorry can't remember the name - someone famous), that police only solve crimes when someone tells them who did it. A great many crimes are either never investigated or remain unsolved. It is clear that the public would not want to hear that sort of stuff, so instead we get the heroic TV cop, able to solve crimes from a few tantalising clues. I think there is a large element of PR here - even the police like watching cop shows because that's the way they'd like it to be.
As for what goes on in medicine - I think the Maidstone scandal shows it's not all about heroically saving people's lives.
Last edited by MRT; 16th October 2007 at 10:12 AM.
MRT you mentioned PR and propaganda and linked it to an over supply of applicants to a specific profession. You also mentioned the reality of these jobs does not measure up to the myth, ie paper work in the police force.
I think it's interesting that whenever the Australian military gets involved overseas, there is a huge increase in enlistment. Maybe it is the same in England. Surely the exciting picture of war painted by TV and movies has an effect similar to what you mentioned.
It would seem a lot of people believe everything they see and read.
Forgive me if I've missed your point.
Ok here is my main point - the media perpetuates and propagates myths. A proportion of the general public believes those myths.
You often hear that an author has written a 'procedural' detective book that is unbelieviably accurate. How do they know that - because their police contact told them (the PR connection!). And yet, almost every detective show on TV makes a blindingly obvious error right at the start - it shows a detective working on one case at a time. And if, by some miracle, they happen to be working on two at once, as night follows day, you know they will turn out to be connected. In reality, detectives work on many cases at once most, if not all, completely unconnected. Anyone who dials 999 expecting their case to be handled by an Inspector Morse, Rebus or even Barnaby is in for a shock. They will, instead, be met with an overstretched system.
I should say here that I have nothing against the police, medical profession etc. I'm sure they do a fine job within the limited resources they are given. My point is that the public is being given unrealistic expectations of their capabilities.
My wider point is that fiction is a major source of unrealistic beliefs. People on this forum are often amazed how people come to believe the weird stuff they do.I think that at least part of those beliefs originate in fiction. Fiction tends to come in genres and genres have conventions. The detective genre has the convention of the lone brilliant detective who can solve complex cases from a few obscure clues. Not only that but they do it repeatedly. If such a person actually existed, they would soon become famous.
Obviously, no one literally believes that Barnaby exists. But they do believe that someone just like him exists! It is well known that writers research the background to their novels or scripts to be as realistic as possible. What is less well known is that they have to make compromises ('artistic license') to make the stories saleable. The genre is a hard taskmaster. The characters and events in most fiction are not very realistic at all, even if some of the technical details are accurate.
It is from horror fiction that the idea that ghosts are spirits emerges. If you examine a real case of a haunting, there is usually no hint of any 'entity' being involved whatsoever. However, the witnesses in the case will often believe there is a spirit at work and may even have 'identified' it!
I think that fiction is a major factor in the longstanding question of where strange beliefs originate.
MRTReally I think you discredit the ability of individuals most (if not all) of whom are perfectly able to distinguish, between fiction and fact from the examples you have provided.Ok here is my main point - the media perpetuates and propagates myths. A proportion of the general public believes those myths.
It’s all just speculation and generalizations from an elitism type stance and this comes across in many of your posts MR MRT. All because you’re not fooled doesn’t mean the rest of the world is fooled as you would like to portray it.
Last edited by BillB; 17th October 2007 at 06:22 AM.
Just had an interesting thought perhaps MRT should conduct a study of the effects of media perpetuating and propagating myths and its effects on the general public in believing those myths. Then he could get others to replicate his study and at the end of all this we can pat him on the back and say “Well that was a waste of time then!”
Oh and finally if this doesn’t get me banned nothing will!!
MRT if you actually believe half of what you say then you must be a WOO-WOO
I'm not sure if you're interested in serious debate or not. Assuming you are, this post is not based on speculation so much as experience. People obviously know fiction is not true and yet, by their actions, they sometimes demonstrate that, at some level, they still believe it.Originally Posted by BillB
MRT
Really I think you discredit the ability of individuals most (if not all) of whom are perfectly able to distinguish, between fiction and fact from the examples you have provided.
It’s all just speculation and generalizations from an elitism type stance and this comes across in many of your posts MR MRT. All because you’re not fooled doesn’t mean the rest of the world is fooled as you would like to portray it.
I am interested and I am more than capable, but I just differ in my opinions!!
I have been thinking this over and there are other reasons to explain this behavior.MRT
Really I think you discredit the ability of individuals most (if not all) of whom are perfectly able to distinguish, between fiction and fact from the examples you have provided.
It’s all just speculation and generalizations from an elitism type stance and this comes across in many of your posts MR MRT. All because you’re not fooled doesn’t mean the rest of the world is fooled as you would like to portray it.
People are hardly likely to apply for a job they've never heard of. Careers on TV reach a wider audience, so would have more applicants.
As for the military example I mentioned earlier. People would be inclined to "do their bit" when the country is active overseas but see no reason to join during calm times.
So I guess there is more to it than believing media hype.
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