Some things that aren't surprising about Ken Livingstone's election campaign ... - The Guardian (blog)

When I first saw the broadcast in question I took three things for granted. One, that it was scripted; two, that the people in it had been chosen by the advertising agency that made the film because they'd come across as a diverse group of likeable Londoners and would deliver their lines effectively; three, that those people, though they performed their parts in the production well, weren't professional actors. Each point seemed obvious and unremarkable. What else would be expected with a political advertisement of this kind?

In each case, my assumption has been proved correct. The last of them appears borne out in this short follow-up released by the Livingstone campaign, in which three of the participants explain how they came to be in the broadcast, saying in the process that they aren't professional actors as some reports have claimed.

Participants in Ken Livingstone mayoral election broadcast talk about their involvement. Video: Livingstone campaign

The media herd coverage of the election broadcast, partly fuelled by Ken Livingstone's tearful response to it when it was launched, has been to ignore or later downplay the Livingstone campaign's insistence that the participants aren't professional actors, while deeming it "a story" that some of them were paid expenses, are saying lines that had been written for them, and were - outrage! - invited to take part by the makers of the film.

We're even being informed that "doubt has now been cast," on whether the Labour candidate's sobs were genuine - cast by people who don't like Ken, that is. I can't comment on the realness or otherwise of Ken's tears (I wasn't there), still less the precise emotions that might have produced them (I barely know the man). I do, however, have a tiny inkling that most of the media interest in discrediting the film forms part of the wider attempt by the Boris campaign and its press allies to equate Ken in voters' minds with fakeness, untruthworthiness and so on. Moo, moo, moo.

I've particularly savoured the slighting use of the term "hand-picked" to describe the people in the film, as if they could only be authentic if the ad agency had simply shoved the first couple of dozen Labour voters they could find in front of a camera and told them to get on with it. Confirmation that a script was provided - this is nudge-winkingly reported as having been "admitted" - would have been relevant had the broadcast taken the form of a compilation of vox pops - spontaneous comments offered by citizens approached at random as they went about their normal business. But the film doesn't even pretend to take that approach.

Dear me, at this rate I'll start thinking the media is full of crap. Meanwhile, the Livingstone camp is officially asserting that the kerfuffle proves the broadcast hit the spot with sympathetic viewers. Could be right. I can shockingly reveal that I've watched it three times and it's had me wiping a tear on each occasion, even though I took it for granted from the start that the participants were scripted and "hand-picked," even though I've been a deeply cynical journalist for more than three decades, and even though I might well give my first preference mayoral vote in the election to the Greens.

Perhaps a few more of my fellow hacks should now, just for variety's sake, switch their group quest for bogusness and misrepresentation to some of Boris's campaign offerings: the bulk of his transport manifesto, for example; his "nine-point plan" for London, a third of which he has previously claimed to have already achieved; that interesting pledge that he'd make Londoner's £445 better off by freezing council tax. Can't wait.