Voice of the people can get completely lost in the telling

A Different View with Dave O’Connell

The concept takes its name from the Latin phrase, vox populi – literally ‘the voice of the people’ – more commonly shortened to vox pop, which should really translate as an utterly pointless exercise to fill airtime when you don’t enough actual facts to do it in the first place.

It’s when a reporter goes out on the streets to elicit the views of a handful of passers-by who have little enough to be getting on with, so that they have time to stop and talk.

And they will then be asked if they think some politician or other should resign or if the pubs should be allowed to stay open all night or that the Government should build a house for everyone irrespective of cost.

It used to be justified as a chance to hear the views of ‘the man/woman in the street’ – but every single one of them has access to their own voice these days anyway.

They call it social media – even if it’s about as social as a Soviet workcamp.

Yet if you want to get a reaction to something, you’ll get it there by the skip-load – although it’s rarely balanced or measured…just lots of angry people shaking their fists at the world via their phones.

And still some feel the need for vox pops, with the justification that it provides a platform for the ordinary person to have their say.

And of course there’s nothing wrong with hearing the views of the general public on national radio or television; some of them even pay the licence fee, after all.

It’s just that – if we were honest about it – if we heard them offering such views within our actual earshot, we’d duck into a taxi or a dark alleyway to avoid them.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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