Vox pop horror horror, vox pop horror

As a journalism student, one of the things I dread the most is the vox pop.

Vox pop, or vox populi, translates from Latin as the 'voice of the people.'

I am not known for my passion for the opinions of John Everyman and I take great amusement from the comedy blog spEak You're bRanes, a delightful satirical commentary on the comments left on online news.

What's more, the title is (I presume) a reference to the even funnier (and even more satirical) Speak Your Brains segment from The Day Today.

Ordinarily I would link directly to a video above, but seeing as I know Chris Mayer will love to see it again I'm going to embed an example instead so you can't help but see it.


So as someone who generally couldn't care less about public opinion - after all, S Club got to number one, didn't they? - I'm not exactly suited to requesting it.

But that's the least of one's troubles when vox-popping.

First of all you have a lot of legal issues. You can't usually do it indoors, for example, because even places like shopping centres are usually private property and you tend to get moved along.

Secondly, being outside is hell for audio quality. You get wind, you get cars going past to overlap people, it's a nightmare.

Thirdly, if people don't want to talk to you, they can be anything from friendly to perfunctory to flat-out rude.

But the worst part of it for me - other than, as a friend of mine helpfully pointed out, having to do it - is that I feel their pain.

If I see someone on the street with that hopeful look on their face like they're going to try and talk to me, the majority of the time I ignore them. I try to be as polite as I can about it, but the majority of the time I just don't care or it's some annoying sales pitch. Usually I just keep walking.

That's right. If I was trying to vox-pop myself, I wouldn't talk to me, so how can I expect others to?

Nevertheless, vox-pops are the bane of a young journalist, so I can expect to be doing a lot more of them.

Oh well. At least no-one's punched me in the face yet.

Photo from flickr courtesy of Will-Joel-Taylor