The Hutton Inquiry

Now, I'm a bit sick of all this David Kelly nonsense, as I'm sure many others are, but like it or not it's a story that remains quite prominent in UK news agendas. What really prompted me to start this thread was something I saw whilst watching SkyNews earlier this morning. Now I'll admit I don't watch SkyNews all that often, so I don't know if it's a 'new' thing, but I was a little surprised to be watching a 'reconstruction' of today's events at the Hutton Inquiry.

Now, it's not that I find it in any way offensive, or anything like that. What really struck me was the crassness of it all. The whole thing looked horrendously amateurish with what one might charitably call a 'representative' set (i.e. one that wasn't big on realistic detail), and truly appalling acting, such that my surprisingly sober mind was completely distracted by what was being said, and focusing more on how badly it was being communicated. Not since my days of GCSE Drama have I ever seen such an abysmal performance, and I was left wondering what on earth the point was in the exercise.

To a degree, I can understand that it's more interesting to watch events unfolding rather than reading several consecutive screens worth of text being monotonously narrated with "Lord Hutton then said..." and "Susan Watts then paused..." and I can of course appreciate that they're not exactly going for BAFTAs, but I can't help but feel that something could have been done to make it less cheesy than it all turned out.

I don't know... maybe I was just unlucky, and turned in to see a particularly bad 'episode'. All credit to SkyNews for trying something different, but - and I'm not really all that keen on starting another BBC vs Sky argument here; credit where credit's due, and I know SkyNews is a far greater innovator than N24 has been - if the BBC did something like that, people would be going mad, and not just on TV Forum. I'm not exactly SkyNews' biggest fan, but I can't deny it has earned its stripes as the leading news channel in the UK, and as the strongest innovator amongst its rivals, which is why I think that crap like the "Reconstruction Using Actors" should be banished. Quickly.

I think that the majority of media organisations were expecting to win the rights to televise the trial, and were a bit taken a back when they were refused. Indeed, Sky have come up with an innovative way of delivering this story, but to be quite frank, with computer viruses and power cuts, I'd rather hear the outcome of the trial at the end, rather than a running commentry about who is being called up to face questions!

Reconstructions of inquiries where TV coverage wasn't allowed isn't anything new.

Channel 4 News did it for the Damiola inquiry. I'm pretty sure there was also a reconstruction of the Stephen Lawrence inquiry.

It's an effective way of presenting the information rather than putting up numerous slides of text.

Yes, the acting isn't great. But that's not the point .

A good idea from Sky News, which allows us all to experience what was actually being said by those involved without having to dig through a transcript.

Yep - Newsnight used to do quite a lot of courtroom-style reconstructions as well.

It is a useful technique that can be used to make off-camera events more accessible to casual viewers, but other methods using graphicised quotes, virtual courtrooms etc. also have merit.

I am impressed that Sky are managing to turn round a scripted reconstruction in the daily timescale. I think the actors are just trying to remember their lines and not fluff - rather than dazzle us with their characterisations...

Hmm... some reasonable points made, other reasonable points repeated from my original post, and thanks for the enlightenment on earlier reconstructions in a similar vein. Indeed, I had quite forgotten about the Damilola Taylor reconstructions, though I hadn't realised it was as widespread as it sounds.

But as I said before (and I realise that this is a personal view not necessarily shared by a wider audience), while I can see the merits of this methodology, the whole thing just came across as being a bit... well to be honest I'm not sure. I was just very underwhelmed by the whole experience; it simply came across as amateur hour. There are many obvious benefits to reconstructing events - Crimewatch is one excellent example - but I'm just not sure what place such dramatisations have on news channels. I think it comes down to the fact that I feel news organisations should be reporting the news, rather than staging the news. For example, the intonation with which one of the actresses in a reconstruction delivers a line could affect the way we perceive it as an audience, whereas in fact the line as it was delivered in court by the actual person may have been of no real consequence. When you have a narrator telling you "then Lord Hutton said...", there is a lesser chance of intentional or 'accidental' bias.

I realise I'm not phrasing this as well as I perhaps could, but as I've not slept in nearly three days, I beg for leniency from the vocabulary constabulary that patrols the forum with such gusto.