ABSTRACT
‘The following contains opinions some viewers may find challenging’, warns the UK Channel 4 TV continuity announcer for the punningly entitled programme 4Thought. Apparently unironic, this announcement is intoned in the same way as the more usual warning: ‘The following may contain scenes of a sexual or violent nature that some viewers may find offensive’. It appears that, for a neophile media, challenging is the new offensive. 4Thought’s true significance, in contrast to the programme’s misleadingly cerebral title, resides in what it highlights about the media’s disturbingly conservative attitude toward concept-driven discourse—its pre-emptive, Minority Report-like, screening of imminent, incoming ideas. In this sea of media banality, it goes without saying that the BBC provides a tropical island refuge for serious programming; in reality, however, the BBC is arguably the most active anti-intellectual mythmaker precisely because of its pre-eminent cultural reputation for sober discourse. Its much-heralded motto of ‘Nation shall speak peace unto Nation’ could be rewritten more accurately as, ‘the petit-bourgeois nation shall speak arbitrary pieces of myth unto a grateful nation’.
