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'''Vox populi''', which means literally in Latin ''voice of the people'', is a term often used in broadcasting for interviews of members of the "general public".

Contents

Vox pop, the man in the street

Proverbial use

Cultural References

See Also

Notes

Vox pop, the man in the street

Usually the interviewees are shown in public places, and supposed to be giving spontaneous opinions in a chance encounter — unrehearsed persons, not selected in any way. As such, broadcast journalists almost always refer to them as the abbreviated 'vox pop'. In U.S. broadcast journalism it is often referred to as a 'man on the street' interview.
Because the results of such an interview are unpredictable at best, usually vox pop material is edited down very tightly; doing it live is mostly impractical. This presents difficulties of balance, in that the selection used ought, from the point of view of journalistic standards, to be a fair cross-section of opinions.

Proverbial use

Often quoted as, '''Vox populi, vox dei''', "The voice of the people is the voice of God", is an old proverb often erroneously attributed to William of Malmesbury in the twelfth century.^[1]
Another early reference to the expression is in a letter from Alcuin to Charlemagne in 798, although it is believed to have been in earlier use.^[2] The full quotation from Alcuin reads:
:''Nec audiendi qui solent dicere, Vox populi, vox Dei, quum tumultuositas vulgi semper insaniae proxima sit.''^[3]
English translation:
:''And those people should not be listened to who keep saying the voice of the people is the voice of God, since the riotousness of the crowd is always very close to madness.''^[4]

Cultural References

★ In the 1976 satire ''Network'', one of the segments on ''The Howard Beale Show'' is called ''Vox Populi''. Even though it is only mentioned and the segment is never seen, one can assume it involves the general public and their opinions.

See Also

★ Greg Packer, a quasi-professional 'vox pop' interviewee.

Notes

1. http://www.sacklunch.net/Latin/V/voxpopulivoxDei.html
2. http://www.jstor.org/view/00028762/di951364/95p0014d/0
3. ''The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Quotations'', third edition, Oxford University Press, 1993.
4. http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~hulld/q2004-02-11.html