Land of Hope and Technology February 2016 | Page 11

ISSUE 1

Impact of media, no
such thing as bad
publicity?
TV shows such as the Apprentice and
Dragons Den do not present a realistic view
of business. In fact they do rather seem
to reinforce a ‘dog eat dog view’. For that
reason the entrepreneurial community has
often been scathing of such shows. Take the
views of well-known and highly successful
British entrepreneur, most famous for
his sterling work at Pizza Express, Luke
Johnson. In an interview on BBC Radio
Four he said “I think we need to educate
the media and politicians and the public that
entrepreneurs really matter because they
create an awful lot of the new jobs, they are
disproportionately important in innovation
and we want to understand them more, we
want to encourage more of them, and we
want to help them.
“Unfortunately, in our survey about 75 per
cent of entrepreneurs we talked to said
they thought the shows [The Apprentice
and Dragons’ Den] portrayed entrepreneurs
in a caricature way and I think that’s
unfortunate, because it can be off-putting and
it discourages. Ideally what we should be
doing is inspiring more young people to start
a business - or people of any age indeed - to
help create growth.”
Mr Johnson added : “We need to help
change the culture over time, and that means
portraying the more positive, optimist