The TV industry must accept some responsibility for its role in the recent UK riots, alternative MacTaggart lecturer Carol Vorderman has proclaimed.
The former Countdown icon delivered a broadside against the industry’s treatment of working class voices – a theme at this year’s Edinburgh TV Festival – along with the way in which the mainstream media and public broadcasters have failed the nation.
Vorderman, who has turned to political activism in recent years, did not hold back, and drew on the recent riots as an example.
She said: “After 14 years of austerity and lying by the privileged political class, this country is in an absolute mess and the TV industry must accept part of the responsibility for that too, including the riots. We used to be the message makers, the ones who tried to determine the conversation of the country and how responsible have we been with those messages? Not very, in many ways. In some cases, some might say reckless.”
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Vorderman cited the “normalising” of controversial political figures such as Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, who appeared on ITV’s I’m a Celebrity.. Get Me Out Of Here! last year. ITV boss Kevin Lygo faced tricky questions over Farage earlier this week, when his session host Rhianna Dhillon challenged him over that decision, stating that she “wouldn’t exist” if anti-immigration politicians like Farage had their way.
Sparked by the killing of three children in Southport at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class, the UK riots took place earlier this month amid spools of misinformation and interference from the likes of Elon Musk. Pockets of protest arose all over the country, many met with counter protest, and the situation has led to a reckoning regarding the sidelining of South Asian voices in the TV industry.
Vorderman, who worked on Channel 4’s Countdown for 26 years and has an LBC radio show, said the far right has slipped in to fill a vacuum left by the broadcasters.
“You cannot be an industry with the power to create the conversation and then claim that nothing is your responsibility – the two simply don’t add up,” she added.
Social media has also filled the void, she said, describing herself as an “old bird with an iPhone who reached out in the last two years to people who felt they had no political voice.”
She spoke passionately about how TV has failed the working classes and widened regional inequalities, coming two days after James Graham made working class representation a central theme of his MacTaggart.
“Regional snobbery is rife,” said Vorderman, flagging that “our industry is now more heavily weighted to London than ever before.”
She added: “I hope the whole of this year’s TV Festival will really make you consider your own perceptions and that you ask yourself questions about class and opportunity, and the responsibility you hold in the future of this country. I hope from now you get out more around the UK, not just to Edinburgh once a year, I hope you deliberately hold meetings in different towns around the country – because otherwise, and sadly, this industry will only be heading one way.”
She was speaking on the same day as consumer champion Martin Lewis, who railed against “piss poor” pay and working conditions in UK TV.
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