The Inconvenient Truth
T would be interesting if sometimes we could be told why some of the bad material used in our national programmes was ever accepted. Strictly Personal, for example, 4YA’s new Friday night serial, is journalism of a very low order, badly written, sensational, and, I suspect, not even accurate. Take the episode dealing with "the strictly private life of John Wilkes Booth," the assassin of Abraham Lincoln. The play was badly constructed, episodic, and told us next to nothing of the character of Booth himself, except for the constantly reiterated statement that he was. "the greatest actor of his time," a statement which I received with considerable doubt. Junius Brutus Booth, the father. had his measure of fame, but was it not Edwin Booth, John’s brother, who gave up ranting for restraint and earned that title? The reason for this redirection of fame on the part of the scriptwriter was all too obvious; the inconvenient truth would have deprived him of his tear-jerking obbligato-"This admired and famous man, etc. , . . come to this, etc. .. ." Juggling with facts is termed poetic licence, and it has an honourable ancestry; but I feel a certain amount of poetry is required to justify it, and a programme which has neither truth nor beauty has little to
recommend it,
Loquax
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19530911.2.21.2
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 739, 11 September 1953, Page 10
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217The Inconvenient Truth New Zealand Listener, Volume 29, Issue 739, 11 September 1953, Page 10
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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