The Serious Face of Journalism?

Dawn Porter. Jesus. Where do I begin?

I’ve been putting this post off for a long time because I didn’t know how not to make it a personal attack. And I don’t want to make it that. It’s just that watching her *spits the word onto the screen and has to wipe it off* “documentaries” is akin to being trapped in a (very small) lift with a member of the T4 brigade(1) and a Big Brother contestant(2). You can’t believe that the first has pissed away their media degree on this slop and that the second is really such a vacuous hole.

Trapped in a tiny metal box with two braying idiots. That’s the feeling I get when I see her programs. And I’ve never even watched a whole one – not even the lesbian one where there might have been some nudity.

I can’t believe that the TV people have allowed her to make the drivel she does. How much money must one of her shows cost? Fuck knows, but I bet it’s a lot. £100,000 each? Sound about right? Well it doesn’t matter because 50p is too much to see what a bunch of self-deluded media nonces can do when they think people are listening.

But what do you expect from Channel 4, a channel so schizophrenic as to pump out both Big Brother and Dead Set – the later hating the first with such passion as to depict everyone involved (including us the public) as dead eyed monsters who’d rather tear each other apart than take the chance of not appearing on Heat’s cover. And I’m not fool enough to think that 4 don’t get it – they know. They know full well and they hate the Big Brother dumphole as much as anyone. But it makes them money. Money they can both make a program to try and assuage their self-loathing and guilt with as well as throw at Dawn bloody Porter.

Did you see the lesbian one? I’d never heard of her before that. I simply saw my TV telling me some lass was going to try wearing comfortable shoes (but whilst wearing some lippy, of course) for our entertainment. Not being averse to the female form, I decided to watch and charge up the cheap thrill battery that lies just beneath the surface of us all(4).

To say I was disappointed would be an understatement, but probably not in the way you are thinking. I honestly don’t remember if there was any skin. Two minutes in and I didn’t care about that anyway. No, what I couldn’t get over was the pointless, obvious, self-congratulatory tone of the whole piece. And for a documentary that reeked of self-admiration, it was totally empty of meaningful content. It was just some young lass who fancied a fish super to see if (a) she liked it, and (b) it would make her more attractive to men.

To this day I have no idea why the lesbians of Britain haven’t issued an fatwa against the woman for reducing them and their sexuality (not to mention the fucking struggle many of them faced, and face, just to be accepted) down to a hour of giggling, squealing and pieces to camera about how soft a woman’s lips are when she kisses you (“But we didn’t do anything!”).

I half expected this to be a spoof, but when it wasn’t I then expected her to announce she’d be visiting women’s refuges to see just how this plucky young mums go about making themselves look all glam for the fellas of the town they hope will be their kid’s next non-punchy dad(5).

But no. She vanished. I have to say I forgot about her, which is hardly surprising really. Until she suddenly came back a few weeks ago and this time she was travelling the world to see the varied (and no doubt “wacky”) ways that women go about getting a man(6). Cue fours hours (more or less – for me it was four minutes) of documentary that wanted so much to be in the style of Louis Theroux, but came over in the style of a clumsy child pointing at people with disabilities and asking loudly “What’s that?”.

Let’s giggle at some Russian women as they learn how to please their (still-to-be-found) men. Ignore the humiliation of the lesson and call it empowerment. Ignore the shameful state of their country that drove them to this and instead call it a desire for a better life. Don’t look too deep Dawn, you wouldn’t want to find some real misery down there that would get in the way of your wide-eyed Daisy Donovan impression.

There was one about polygamy in the US and one about Japanese geisha. I watched a few minutes pf each and each was as bad as the other. Cheap, vain, back-slapping guff.

And it’s not like there aren’t good reporters out there who could make each of these programs a hundred times better(7) but that’s not what Channel 4 wants is it. They have the Channel 4 news and Dispatches for that. No, what they want is another Daisy Donovan. What they got is Jessica Simpson playing Daisy Duke.

Way to go Channel 4. Soon your audience won’t have brains worth eating and what are the zombies going to do then, eh?

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(1) June Sarpong. Or that muso prat in a hat.

(2) So many. Saskia. Kitten. Charlie. The one with gansta mates. The rapey (3), mad on from Scotland.

(3) Again, not that I’m saying he has raped anyone. Just that he looks like he could. And like he’d know lots of disused industrial buildings.

(4) Zombies, remember.

(5) “Don’t forget that heavy mascara helps cover up bruises. You don’t want to sscare off Mr Right just yet, do you?” *giggles” and/or *looks pensive and bites lower lip, huge sunglasses balanced on top of hair-style that cost more than the running of the refuge for a week*.

(6) Because that is the single most important drive in a woman’s life, obviously. Except lesbians, but they are so lucky anyway because they don’t feel this need for a man so don’t have to look or try or anything and they have soft lady lips to kiss anyway so there.

(7) Two words: Camilla Cavendish.

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