Carol Vorderman calls out "responsibility" of TV industry to tackle division and inequality
In her Alternative MacTaggart Lecture, the former Countdown star said the industry held responsibility for "the state we find our country in".
Carol Vorderman has used her Alternative MacTaggart Lecture at the Edinburgh TV Festival to call out the "responsibility" of the TV industry to tackle division and inequality in wider UK society.
The former Countdown star and experienced broadcaster began her speech by outlining that she would be explaining "the responsibility this industry holds, both directly and indirectly, for the state we find our country in, including in part the recent riots".
She later continued: "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."
She pointed to a number of examples, including the "normalising of Nigel Farage" during his spell on I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! and the "Tufton Street mob", which she described as "opaquely funded right wing lobbying groups, appearing as so-called independent voices so many times on BBC political shows".
And she added: "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."
Vorderman was also vocal about snobbery in the television industry, which she said had contributed to a disconnect with audiences and a vacuum that has allowed far right ideas to spread.
In particular, she highlighted the stark underrepresentation of working class people on screen, with only 8 per cent of TV workers coming from such backgrounds, despite half the UK population identifying as working class.
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She also spoke about the negative impacts of the industry being London-centric, calling for regional representation and the decentralisation of TV production to reflect the broader UK population.
"We bear a responsibility for not giving the working class a voice within the industry and that has its knock on effects whether you like it or not," she explained.
"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."
She ended her speech by claiming that she was "unconvinced" that the appetite was there within the industry for the genuine change that she believes is required, and urged executives to "please prove me wrong".
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Patrick Cremona is the Senior Film Writer at Radio Times, and looks after all the latest film releases both in cinemas and on streaming. He has been with the website since October 2019, and in that time has interviewed a host of big name stars and reviewed a diverse range of movies.
