If the "good news" proposition was an idea she'd offered herself, you could judge it a naive but well meaning wish from a decent youngster. If it was an editorial "suggestion" followed up with some crafty editing, then it sucks. Hard to call.

.. her suggestion (a possibility of course, though I suspect an outside chance) then surely the producers would have done better to advise her not to play that angle, rather than giving it a seperate voice-over and running the weepy-piano music.
I suspect this is just 2008's variation on the old tactic of pushing a contestant who has been recently bereaved, so that Cowell can listen to them sing then give a patronising smile and say, 'I think your dead dad would be very proud of you.' Of course, the contestants given this treatment are always able singers. You never see this build up with a tragic back-story for some poor deluded kid who turns out to sing like a cat in a blender, that's just one of the rules of the format. What I didn't expect was to have my own, fairly well trained, cynicism put to such a test.

a well crafted and manipulated form of television and after several years they have honed it to perfection for their audience. I can't wait until someone finally plants one on a judge but doubt we will ever see it.

Big Brother reached an all-time low today (if it is possible) with the "star" of reality TV, Jade Goody, hearing the bad news about her cervical cancer test live on the Indian Big Brother. Can we go back to TV as entertainment now please? I doubt it.

has always been so pathetic and cynical in it's manipulation of heart strings anyway.
In the last series every single person in the last few ended up in tears in their little videos, and they were the finalists.
Even the guys were blubbing like jessies all over the place, even the ones who were not disabled, overweight, single parent, poverty stricken had to have some sort of angle where they cried ther hearts out!

I sincerely hope that the British public are finally going to say enough is enough with all these reality/celebrity programmes.

I read about that Jade Goody giving permission to the TV company to read out the results of her cancer test live on air - if that is not the most disgustingly low case of how this medium has gone completeley bonkers I don't know what is.

When the reformed "Junkie Mum" takes the stage.

It was the same piece used for little opera singer boy who was bullied.

Don't tell me when to cry!

That is shocking. I know lots of people, me included, think Ben Elton’s a bit of a pillock, but I like his books. “Chartthrob” (available for 79p in most charity shops) is about a TV pop “talent show” (with pretty thinly disguised version of Cowell, Osborne etc.) and says everything there is to to say about this odious phenomenon. This scene could have come straight out of Ben Elton’s book.
As I argued in that Top Of The Pops thread, a proper pop show, with real pop stars performing real songs that are genuinely popular could fare well in a ratings war against this horrible, manipulative cack. It may not beat it but it would be a refreshing alternative.

the blubbing. Howabout the howling laughter at the trainwreck no-hopers with minus talent and personality. They know they are going to be shown ad infinitum on the internet, ridiculed and lampooned for years to come.

Why?

For the 30 seconds of "fame", unless they are so bad they get invited back onto the ITV2 repeat show and the end-of-term parade of grand idiots, murdering a classic song or whatever.

Whatever happened to aspiring to be like those celebrities who made the grade through talent and intelligence. Now it's a case of wanting to be the next Paris, Jordan, Goody or Kerry.

...that the creator of the broadcast vacuum Dermot o' Dreary is given employment, ever. That's as offensive.

"A big hand for Millican and Nesbitt, there, lazen jemmen. Now I know you two are both miners, which is a wunnerful profession that keeps the home fires burning, year in and year out. Yet, as I'm sure many viewers watching tonight will already know, it's also an occupation that involves an alarmingly high risk of irritative lung disease. So, boys, has either of you coughed up anything viscous and bloodstreaked recently? Because if so, we rilly wanna hear about it, we rilly, rilly do."

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/pressass/20080821/ten-itv-denies-x-factor-singer-pressure-5f8abb3.html