Wednesday 30 June 2010

Mail attacks BBC for 'voyeuristic' Wimbledon coverage

Last week, this blog pointed out that tabloid coverage of Wimbledon had been dominated by pictures taken up the skirts of the female competitors.

As if to prove the point, the Mail followed it with not one, but two more of these pervy, pointless articles:



(Not to be outdone, The Sun produced a slide show of the 'ten best tennis bottoms'.)

But today we find the hypocrites at the Mail attacking the BBC for, believe it or not, 'voyeurism' in their coverage of Wimbledon.

Words fail.

The Paul Revoir article is based on a few anonymous comments (left on an unnamed messageboard) but the Mail article is currently second story on their website so they're happy to make the point. Never mind that the article makes clear the BBC haven't received any actual complaints - so much for the claim the camerawork has 'sparked fury'.

The Mail happily prints little else but upskirt pictures of female tennis players in their Wimbledon coverage (they published another yesterday, of Tsvetana Pironkova). But when the BBC shows a couple of spectators kissing - in a public place, among hundreds of people, at an event that is televised - that is described as 'voyeuristic camerawork'.

Oh, and the Mail decides to helpfully post a picture of one of the couples in question - for the benefit of the millions of people who visit their website. So it's voyeurism for the BBC to show them, but fine for the Mail.

UPDATE: The Mail updated their article at 11:27am, adding:

Of the 150 viewers who expressed their displeasure on the BBC's message boards about various matches...

This is an outright lie. The discussion thread 'Voyeurism at Wimbledon' on the BBC's Points of View pages had a total of 150 comments at the time of their update. Several of the people complaining about the coverage had posted multiple comments - for example, in the first 60 comments posted, only six different people are complaining about the 'voyeurism' and they posted 22 messages between them. Moreover, there are a large number of comments from people who didn't have a problem with the shots of the crowd.

Therefore, to claim '150 viewers...expressed their displeasure' is totally wrong and having trawled the thread for the critical comments, they are very well aware of that.

5 comments:

  1. The comments on the article seem to range from 'couldn't give a shit' through to 'bloody hypocrites', so I think the Mail might have shot itself in the foot with this one.

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  2. It's the same sort of hypocrisy that they displayed during the Ross/Brand affair..."we were so shocked and appalled by what we heard on the radio that we are giving you a transcript so you can be as shocked and appalled as we were".

    When they write that we are given "voyeuristic' shots of the crowd - at the expense of the tennis" do they have any evidence whatsoever that one serve or rally was missed because the cameraman was preoccupied? Of course not.

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  3. Don't think the mail could sink much lower to be honest. The hypocrisy is sickening.

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  4. it would b funny if it wasn't true...

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  5. Having looked at the Daily Mail web page for the last couple of days I beginning to wonder how many bikinis Christine Bleakley and Kelly Brook own between them. I've counted at least six.

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