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Partisanship in commentary
By Will last year, mid-October, 3 Comments »
Italians are wonderfully, unashamedly biased when commentating…but not often, to my knowledge, are they on the side of England. Ben Hammersley has an interesting tale of watching yesterday’s Rugby World Cup Final in Italy.
3 Comments »I watched it on Sky Sport Italia, here in Italy, with the Italian commentary on and, bloody hell, were they biased. It was quite possibly the most partisan commentary I’ve heard on TV: the two commentators so blatantly, outrageously, violently pro-England that even I, a Natural Born Englishman of the first order, was getting a bit Steady-On-Chaps about it. Commentators just aren’t supposed to use the “We” form of any verb, and at times you got the feeling they were a hair away from screaming “take him down! take him doooooowwwwn!” like it was the arrival of the Oliphants in the Return of the King.
As far as I know there’s no particular dislike of South Africa here, so I’m guessing it was a hemisphere thing, with the Italian’s defaulting to supporting the North. Still, as the clock ticked down and it became obvious that England weren’t go to pull one out of the bag, it was greatly comforting to share the disappointment with the two very gutted sounding commentators. That, and seeing Prince William swear very loudly when the try was disallowed, almost made up for the whole thing.
Three cheers for partisan cricket blogging
By Scott last year, at the start of October, 8 Comments »
There’s an interesting debate going on in Will’s India photo thread, which is well worth a read. In it, Will made a point that I’m as partisan as it gets when it comes to my blogging.
And I make no apologies for being an Australian cheerleader. I’ve been very lucky over the last fifteen years or so to see some extraordinary performances by the Australian cricket team, and they deserve to be celebrated. Moreover, every cricket fan has the right to cheer on their team.
But as a blogger, writing to an international readership, I think it is also important to be honest, and call it as I see it- and applaud good play from where-ever it may come. And also, when teams play badly, you have to be honest about that as well. So there is a balance to be sought. It is different to what happens with newspaper or radio broadcasts, which are aimed at one particular national audience. - for example, Simon Briggs wrote a match report about the England vs Sri Lanka ODI- dwelling more on England’s failings then Sri Lanka’s excellence. That is natural- he’s writing for an English paper after all.
Do we succeed here at the Corridor in striking the right balance? I’d like to think we do, but ultimately that is up to the reader to decide.
8 Comments »