The Unsubtle Art of Non-Verbal Communication 407


Human beings can communicate by gesture and facial expression as well as by verbal language. In the following video, at 39 seconds in BBC presenter Jo Coburn is not communicating to the viewer – the director has switched back to her before she expects. She is however working very hard on communicating non-verbally to somebody, presumably the director, with quite an extreme facial gesture.

My question to you is this – what do you think she is trying to communicate with that facial gesture, and why? It is not a rhetorical question, your answers are welcome. You need to watch the whole video for context – it’s less than a minute.


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407 thoughts on “The Unsubtle Art of Non-Verbal Communication

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  • Mark Rowantree

    She is undodtedly surprised at the voracity of her colleague and is trying to reassure her director that this unexpected gem of voracity was nothing to do with her?

  • Ian Davies

    My take on what she’s hearing:

    “Oh my god, what’s he saying.
    “cut that..”
    “..back to Jo in the studio”
    “NOW!”

  • Anon1

    Sharp Ears informs us:

    “Incidentally, Coburn is a member of the congregation of Ealing Synagogue.”

    Could Sharp Ears explain how, in her mind, this piece of “incidental” information is relevant to the discussion here?

    • joel

      That sort of shite should have no place on Craig’s blog after what he was put through in the courts.

      • Anon1

        Of course, what Sharp Ears is really saying is “Incidentally, Coburn is J*w*sh”.

        Ie, that makes her bad. That is the reason she is bad. Racism, pure and simple. Perhaps unsurprisingly, no one has called her out on it.

        • David Avi

          I have (as soon as I saw her comments). It is really deplorable that she gets away with this sort of comment time after time. Mr Murray obviously either can’t or doesn’t want to control her.

          • bj

            Sharp Ears has a sharp tongue.

            But you bunch of staunch defenders of Israel, and the fascist apartheid killer state that it is, are the least likely to have the chutzpah to point fingers.

      • Anon1

        Of course, what Sharp Ears is really saying is “Incidentally, Coburn is J****h”.

        Ie, that makes her bad. That is the reason she is bad. Racism, pure and simple. Perhaps unsurprisingly, no one has called her out on it.

        • Garth Carthy

          What is racism? Isn’t the British establishment, political system and mainstream media fundamentally racist in vilifying Russia, Syria and Iran, for example?
          Though I agree that ‘Sharp Ears’ might have been wise not to have mentioned Coburn’s association with the Ealing Synagogue, I can see that if she is Jewish, it is quite possible that Coburn might be a ‘friend of Israel’ and therefore her sense of balanced, unbiased broadcasting might be compromised.

          Whatever the explanation for this farcical broadcasting disaster, it is clear that Coburn and the BBC were caught out.

        • Tom Welsh

          Being Jewish has never made anyone a bad person – in fact, as opposed to in other people’s minds.

          However, it does suggest some possible motives a given person might have. Substitute, for a moment, if you will, the assertion that a key person in a political scenario is Russian.

        • Republicofscotland

          “Racism, pure and simple. Perhaps unsurprisingly, no one has called her out on it.”

          That’s a belter coming from you.

        • Sohail

          …or how to expand the definition of race in contemporary society to include religion, courtesy of the OSCE.

          Yo, dem bildings be raciss bro.

    • Observer

      At least she is not part of the disproportionate rug munchers union at the beeb. Such haganah hags are too few to make any difference to the narrative.

    • Sharp Ears

      The info is on her Wikipedia entry. Better ask them. Are you subbing for Habbabkuk today?

      • David Avi

        So that information is in Wikipedia – does that mean you’re obliged to quote it on this blog?

        • J

          Why not? Can you spell out the argument for ‘ignorance is better than knowledge,’ I missed the meeting.

          • David Avi

            That’s a straw man you’re putting up. Nothing to do with “ignorance is better than knowledge” and everything to do with why is Ealing synagogue membership mentioned when there is absolutely no connection with the rest of her comments.

  • Rhys Jaggar

    One BBC reporter top of the weekly list for rendition then!

    Joe Coburn promises to tell MI6 whatever they need to hear as she knows old fatso Andrew Neil is the only block to her being head of BBC propaganda in future.

  • Republicofscotland

    Hah ha, Coburn’s in a right state there as her director is screaming down the line, and in her ear CUT!!! CUT!!! THE FEED!!!!!

    The deceptive prevaricating b*stards that haunt the state broadcaster had the wind put up them. The dozy heel who let the cat out of the bag, will get his knuckles severely rapped.

  • Robin James Banks

    Her expression quite clearly registers, “Not at all sure this type of information is suitable to be aired on the UK’s National Public Service Broadcaster – and I know my director will share that view.’ We’re all in this together at the BBC – servants of the Tory idiocracy.”

  • Republicofscotland

    As the BBC and the government are just two facets of the same ideology, then so are the controlling banking institutions around the world.

    Barclays and HSBC, are funding Trident/class submarines via investments and financing in the UK . The Russian version of Trident class subs is Dolgorukiy class submarines, they are manufactured by a firm called Sevmesh, which receives it funds from the state bank (VEB) Vnesheconombank.

    In April 2011 VEB signed a huge loan agreement with 19 banks most of those banks were outside Russia, including Barclays and you guessed it HSBC.

    It’s all just a big game, and we are the suckers caught in the middle who are preached to by our state broadcaster, telling us who are the good guys and who are the bad guys.

    • Anon1

      You are claiming that the state broadcaster acts in the interests of the state? Well colour me shocked.

      Yet all the denizens of the blog want more state, not less of it. And which paper actually prints this stuff about Mi6 and complicity in torture? The daily Fucking mail.

      • Republicofscotland

        Well glad to see you admit that the BBC is indeed a mouthpiece for the British government.

        As for wanting more of the above, that’s debatable.

        The Westminster Parliament has been around in an official capacity from around 1265. The adversal seating positions arose from prior unoffical meetings at St. Stephen’s chapel’s choir stalls.

        The front benches are two and half swords lengths apart, just incase the debates get overheated. One founder of the parliament was Simon de Montfort, a half-English, half-French man.

        De Montfort, was the Earl of Leicester, he violently expelled the J**s from the city and cancelled all debts due to them.

        De Montfort was killed at the Battle of Evesham, (The Second Baron’s war).

        I can’t speak for other commentors, but I certainly don’t want anymore of Westminster period.

  • Tony

    And not for the first time the BBC encounters ‘ technical difficulties ‘ when an inconvenient truth pops up.

  • freddie nerk

    She’s trying to tell the director in no uncertain terms that Casciani is giving far too much information away via his reporting of the specifics of the rendition case and that this will offend the Great Good illuminati thus a technical glitch needs to be triggered such that his “Politically incorrect “commentarybe cut short…..
    …..

  • mog

    Ah, the old convenient technical glitch scenario. Reminds me of…..Jane Standley in Sept 2001….

    Oh sorry, that is still off limits, I mean, the BBC wouldn’t do that would they?

    • Rose

      Do we know if dear old Dom is still in work or has he been sent to the salt mines?

    • Anon1

      Here we go again. Reuters filed a mistaken report that WTC7 had collapsed when it fact it hadn’t. The news organizations reported the mistake as fact. Of course if you are a mentally ill resident of loopy conspiraland this means the BBC had foreknowledge of a controlled demolition of the building.

      • J

        The denial of facts which make one uncomfortable is a recognised phenomena, named cognitive dissonance. The conflation or attribution of unrelated phenomena for the purpose of misleading a discussion is usually known as the straw man argument. Here you engage in both. Mog did not allege the BBC had foreknowledge, or that foreknowledge was her point, just that someone did appear to have foreknowledge, especially in light of the (scientifically) unprecedented events on the day. Subtle difference.

        The accusation of madness or ‘evil’ as a method for controlling discussion is an old one. Arthur Miller did a fair job of describing how people, when they are afraid of things they don’t understand, can become vicious and how that fear can be channelled into horrific acts in his play The Crucible, ostensibly about the Salem witch trials but widely recognised as an allegory of this dynamic as played out during the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings.

        Screaming the word Witch hasn’t been a terribly useful technique since the play was written and performed but conspiracy theorist is a modern variant.

        Lastly, any theory which accounts for all of the known facts is not a conspiracy theory, it’s just a theory. If a theory does not account for all the known facts and instead requires omission of some of them in order to work, it’s not a theory at all, it’s just another lie.

  • Made By Dom

    I’d put a gazillion Earth pounds on the answer being, she was genuinely surprised that they cut back to her so quickly.
    Her facial expression appears to say, ‘Oh okay. We’re moving on are we?’.

    We’ve all seen this kind of thing on live TV a thousand times before.

    The problem with a ‘nudge-nudge wink-wink’ conspiracy is that it actually implies Coburn is an incredibly conscientious and alert journalist who’s in total control. The more likely scenario is she couldn’t give two shits about the story and just wants to make it to the end of the program so she can get down to Greggs.

  • Clark

    I think her face expresses partial surprise, and something like collusion, like, “Oh?! Oh, OK then”. Meanwhile, she’s straightening up her sheaf of papers in a gesture that suggests conclusion.

  • Manda

    Mouth says ‘Oh, my, God’, eyes flick to director signalling ‘cut, cut, cut’.

  • Julija Bogoeva

    Only three things are obvious here –
    that there were technical problems with the image and sound
    that the presenter is in a hurry to cut the report(er) short
    that the reporter was in the process of clearly and forcefully citing findings about rendition

    Everything else is speculation.

    Unless there is reliable info that the technical problems were intentionally caused to prevent the reporter from finishing and that the presenter deliberately did so for that reason, I am not, and we should not, in my view, jump to any conclusions. Not because I think the BBC is a credible news source, since it demonstrably has not been for a very long time now, but because only facts are relevant. There could have been various reasons for the technical disturbance and for the facial grimaces. Even if I would tend to believe that the reporter was cut short in order to protect the public from the truth about rendition and to protect the government from the political and legal consequences, I simply can not take that for certain or even most probable based on the clip.

    The clip is, however, an important example for a professional, thorough review of BBC journalism, practices and role.

  • andrew wilson

    As I recall from a long time ago, it was usual for there to be a delay on incoming calls in order to prevent bad stuff being broadcast live. Are we seeing something similar here?

    I guess the test of whether we were supposed to here this information comes when the BBC carries it in later news broadcasts. If it gets memory holed then we can be reasonably sure that we were not supposed to hear what we heard.

    • Sharp Ears

      Good that Ron Paul invited him on to a stage to finish what he was saying. It followed CNN censoring.

  • Christopher

    Downloaded and saved, just in case it is “accidentally” wiped. In which case it will uploaded again. And again as necessary.

  • Ms Blancmange

    Looks like the editor cut the footage because it was too ‘hot’ to broadcast – the expression on Jo Coburn’s face is ambivalent – was she simply annoyed that an important report had been subject to technical interference or was she being instructed by said editor to terminate Casciani’s report by speaking over him, because at that point, an appropriate response (a fudge) had not been formulated by the BBC? It could very well be the latter

  • andrew wilson

    If the picture was lost but not sound why not simply continue with sound.

    My assumption is that she was reacting to a decision to cut off Casciani. I am sure that she’d have known the content of the piece in order to be able to follow her scripted questions.

  • mog

    Anon1
    Thanks for the stock response, all very ‘document 1035-960’.
    You remembered to include the smearing allegation of mental illness,
    and the ‘explanation’ through cock-up theory,
    but forgot the assertion of co-incidence. (The feed ‘failed’ at a rather opportune moment.)

    Another training day perhaps ?

  • Sharp Ears

    O/T Good way of TfL taking away your money. If you have a dormant Oyster card, claim it back.

    Customers urged to claim £321m from dormant Oyster cards
    More than 100 million people have used the electronic travel cards since they were launched 15 years ago.
    More than £321m of balances and deposits are sitting on Oyster cards that have not been used for at least a year, TfL figures show’
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-44666832

    • Charles Bostock

      Lots of people take out subscriptions and then dnn’t use them entirely. Take health clubs as an example. Why does that amount to TfL or the health club “taking away your money”? Surely it just means you aren’t maximising your assets?

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