Shipwrecked escapes racism censure

MediaGuardian is reporting Ofcom's announcement in the latest issue of its Broadcast Bulletin that Channel 4 did not breach the Broadcasting Code when airing episodes of Shipwrecked earlier this year (see here). The issue arose after one contestant offered an enlightened proclamation in her introductory interview: “I don’t really like fat people, I don’t really like really ugly people. I don’t like it when foreigners come into our country and they don’t take on the British culture and the British values. I’m quite for the British Empire and things. I’m for slavery but that’s never going to come back”.

With echoes of the recent 'ginger-ist' debate on bbc.co.uk, Ofcom considered that while the 'fatist' and 'uglyist' comments may have been considered rude by many viewers, it was the remainder of the comments that were potentially offensive under the Code. On these points, Ofcom concluded that the context of the broadcast - the laudable responses of other contestants to her views, the broadcaster's reference to them as 'extreme', and viewer expectations of unscripted reality shows - justified the finding that rule 2 (on harm and offence) had not been breached. The contestant's behaviour and views were not encouraged or condoned by the broadcaster but were instead robustly challenged.

First look at the report on BBC impartiality

The following guest posting was submitted by Masters student Zack Simons. It focuses on the publication by the BBC Trust of its report From Seesaw to Wagon Wheel: safeguarding impartiality in the 21st Century. The report was written for a steering group by independent programme-maker John Bridcut. We'd like actively to encourage comment and counterpoint. There has already been much commentary - some considered some gleeful - in the newspapers (1,2,3,4) and elsewhere (1,2), and of course its not a new topic.

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2007 has not been a good year for BBC impartiality.

The Alan Budd report into the impartiality of the BBC's business coverage was released in May, finding that although there was no 'systematic bias', impartiality standards were frequently breached. Presenters often expressed personal product preferences, for example, or showed sycophancy, tacit bias or even overt aggression toward business representatives. One Radio Five Live interview with the managing director of British Gas began: "You're taking the mickey...".

Meanwhile, already this month the BBC has issued a public apology to the Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond for the "rude and dismissive" tone of 'Newsnight' presenter Kirsty Wark during an interview after it received 120 formal complaints (see here and here for similar). In January, Paul Dacre, editor of the Daily Mail, raged against the BBC’s ‘cultural Marxism’, arguing that ‘under the figleaf of impartiality’ the BBC was ‘imposing its own world view’ (1,2,3); Robin Aitken and Richard North have already published books this year claiming systematic left-ward political skew (the latter titled, with appropriate subtlety, ‘Scrap the BBC!’). So the findings of today's report ('From Seesaw to Wagon Wheel'), that bias does indeed exist in the BBC but that ideals of impartiality remain important, may not seem a particularly exciting discovery.

Whilst the report explicitly refrains from attempting a definition of impartiality (referring readers to the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy - how thoughtful) it suggests that: "impartiality involves a mixture of accuracy, balance, context, distance, evenhandedness, fairness, objectivity, open-mindedness, rigour, self-awareness, transparency and truth". Impartiality is also, at various times, ‘coat of many colours’, ‘the BBC’s USP’, ‘not a state of grace, but a state of mind’ and ‘an ‘elusive, almost magical substance’.

Against such an apparently tall order, the report is optimistic. It contends that an expanded model of impartiality still has a central role to play, that it is still valued and expected by the public, even though technological and cultural circumstances are changing so that: 'In today’s multi-polar Britain, with its range of cultures, beliefs and identities, impartiality involves many more than two sides to an argument'.

The report’s '12 principles' variously cover the points that impartiality is not easy to apply, that there are many ways of applying it, that there are many stages to its application and that, most of all, we need to keep trying to apply it: "it is a legal requirement, but it should also be a source of pride".

It accompanies these assertions with an Ipsos-mori poll, which shows that 84% of the sample agreed (half of them ‘strongly’) with the proposition that impartiality is difficult to achieve, but broadcasters must try very hard to do so. Only 3% disagreed. Victory for impartiality.

Yet, at the level of application, the report finds systematic flaws at the BBC, finding a "Roneo mentality", or group-think, that perpetuates 'liberal' values among BBC staff. The report also criticizes the BBC's deference to single-issue, celebrity-driven campaigns like Live 8 and Make Poverty History. It gives examples of anti-Americanism, anti-countryside bias, and some dubious observances of multi-culturalism. For example, BBC executives at an impartiality seminar admitted that they would broadcast images of a Bible being thrown away, but not the Koran for fear of offending Muslims.

The consensus reaction to the report from the UK press has so far been 'tell us something we didn't know'. We have heard these multi-faceted, dynamic models of impartiality before. Peter Horrocks, the head of BBC TV news, gave a much-discussed speech in Oxford last year that prescribed 'radical impartiality' as the way forward: "the need to hear the widest range of views – all sides of the story. So we need more Taleban interviews, more BNP interviews - of course put on air with due consideration – and the full range of moderate opinions".

Despite this kind of rhetoric, the new report finds that 57% of survey respondents felt ‘that broadcasters often fail to reflect the views of people like me’. Indeed, the demographic that feels best represented by broadcasters is ‘middle-aged ABC1s, readers of ‘quality’ newspapers, and supporters of the Liberal Democrats.’ Not so radical after all.

Against such mounting empirical and theoretical evidence against ‘impartiality’ as an effective ideal, on first glance the BBC’s new report is an underwhelming document. It operates on the assumption that impartiality must be maintained, notwithstanding the fact that after almost a century of broadcasting, it has no adequate definition and seems nigh on impossible to sufficiently monitor or enforce.

One wonders whether the issue here is less one of the relevance and practicability of ‘impartiality’ standards, than the BBC’s inability to let them go. With ‘impartiality’ comes justifications for universal service, for licence fees, for public-service broadcasting itself. And, beyond this, impartiality is a key, and very economically valuable, distinction for the BBC’s brand around the world. As Ian Hargreaves put it, the BBC ‘needs impartiality to survive’. Is it surprising, then, that today’s report so cheerfully recommends that these standards are worth keeping?

Zack Simons.

To whom the spoils? the dividend from digital switchover

Earlier this week the Guardian had a helpful overview by Owen Gibson and Richard Wray of the debate regarding the decision to be made by Ofcom regarding the allocation of spectrum released through the digital switchover process. The public service broadcasters are seeking the opportunity to launch a number of HD channels over the Freeview platform, Ofcom isn't convinced that they need released spectrum in order to do this, and the Government has stressed the need to see through lobbyists' partisan claims. Ultimately, the resolution reached may shape the broadcasting sector for a generation (or maybe unforeseen technological developments will intervene?), and it will be fascinating to watch the escalationof the debate as the decision point nears.

The first draft of history?

Mark Lawson had an interesting piece in yesterday's Guardian focused on the dangerous permanence of transient comment. Picking up on the reporting of recent events such as the 'murder' of Bob Woolmer and the arrest of the first suspect in the Suffolk murders, he noted how the pressures of 24 hr competitive journalism sometimes push today's writers into errors of fact and opinion that might formerly have been avoided by more conscientious sub-editing. The result is that "for all of us, journalism's use as a historical record is being ruined by a growing impatience with fact... problems have occurred because of significant changes in both the speed and the durability of journalism. Pace is the greatest danger".

Has there really been a notable shift? Well, reading the piece, I was reminded of the quite startling note offered by Jon Snow of how his first real scoop - sent in days ahead of the competition - was knocked on the head by his news desk due to the absence of any corroborating account.

I also had three follow-up thoughts. First, if the nature or 'quality' of journalistic output has changed, this should condition the ways in which academics (historians and others) use such sources; the readiness with which insights are adopted or challenged. The real risk to the historical account is that these secondary regurgitators of the record will be similarly lax.

Secondly, there's the issue of whether media law is doing anything to corral journalists into producing more sustainable (read accurate) accounts and comment. Perhaps in the defamation field, the Reynolds defence is pushing in the right direction, while in other areas - contempt for example as discussed here and elsewhere in recent weeks - more might be done.

Finally, the quite remarkably self-referential nature of our modern media which sees mistakes challenged, elaborations offered and corrections sifted and highlighted by bloggers, commentators, other journalists and readers' editors gives reason to be sanguine over the longer horizon about the identified failings.

Can the 'n-word' ever be innocuous?

Big Brother contestant Emily has been withdrawn from the show after being heard to ask a black fellow-detainee, 'are you pushing it out, you nigger?'. Channel 4 aired the event in a round-up show (ie not live), with the predictable result that Ofcom will receive hundreds of complaints. The broadcaster explained that it thought it would be inappropriate not to air the clip, as to do otherwise would be to hang Emily out to dry.

A transcript of the 'offending' interchange is available on the MediaGuardian website. The video excerpt is available to view on YouTube, and is worth watching because it makes clear that the context was one of jocular interplay between friends - Charly was miming being pregnant. This footage also juxtaposes nicely real vindicative sniping between Chanelle and Charly ('I've never met such a two-faced bitch' / 'what time is it, you haven't looked in the mirror for two minutes') with the relatively innocuous comments between friends that have caused the furore. Indeed, Emily went on to say that she and her friends - blacks and whites - regularly refer to each other in such manner.

The episode reminds me of one response to Reginald D Hunter's Pride, Prejudice and Niggas which ran in the West End and at Edinburgh last year (and was lauded by the critics as 'excitingly intelligent', 'sharp, ambitious and truly powerful'). The Metro effused that Hunter 'holds no truck with sheep-like adherence to established views, whether religious, political or sexual'. The Tube banned his advert from its property.

Hunter is no Bernard Manning. As a black-man he is deemed free to adopt whatever language he wishes when referring to his own race. Similarly, however, Emily - from what we know of her - is no racist. It seemed that both were using language in a subversive way and by doing so demonstrated that they have no sympathy with sectarianism. See also the adoption of 'queer' or 'fenian' by similarly marginalised groups (of course, this subversion can be taken too far). There was no problem in Charly refering to herself in such fashion. Somehow, it is supposed to make a difference that that Emily is white.

Make no mistake, discrimination / persecution based on race / gender / sexual orientation, religious-affiliation and the like is anathaema to the desirable society. We possess a terrible history in which people were persecuted, humiliated and murdered on account of their skin tone, and there remains a continuing legacy of discrimination and abuse based on race.

All this notwithstanding, the point is that as far as the use of language is concerned, context is everything. To consider only bare words as stated is to deny that we are intelligent beings capable of nuance and sophistication in communication. Channel 4 should have done no more than take the opportunity to issue a statement condemning racism, and to distance itself from any inference to this effect that any (egg-shell skull) viewer would wish to draw in the instant case. [To be fair to London Underground the relationship of the banned poster to the subversive, (received) norm-challenging comedy show wasn't necessarily self-evident in the advertisement itself].

To my mind the various responses to this episode - from that of Emily's friends, to Channel 4, to representatives of the Commission for Racial Equality - are evocative of nothing so much as the response of kids in the (middle-class) playground to an exclamation: 's**t'! So much was implicit in Channel 4's recognition that Emily should not suffer over-strong criticism. It is an infantile society that looks for affront where none is intended. Did I say 'infantile', oh, well I meant INFANTILE.

Cover broken: Blair voices sympathy for MPs drive to evade FoI

The Times noted today that Tony Blair has at last explicitly - however tentatively - confirmed (in Wednesday's PMQs) a long-suspected degree of sympathy for the move by MPs to exempt themselves from the operation of the FoI Act. This can be news only to those who believe that trees falling in lonely forests make no noise...

Contempt of court?: the growth and growth of trial by media

The Guardian has a very interesting piece (originally published in the British Journalism Review) by Bob Woffinden on the abuse - or rather the disregard - of at least the spirit of contempt laws by news managers working for politicians, the police, the Crown Prosecution Service and others. It outlines a number of recent examples, which when collected together in this way make the point forcefully.

He also notes the recent announcement by the Attorney General of the intent to conduct research into the premises of the existing contempt laws (1,2), that is the presumption that media comment will influence how jurors are disposed towards defendants. An alternative, perhaps more pragmatic approach - more familiar in North American jurisdictions - is to respond to actual rather than hypothetical cases of influence; to focus on cure and not prevention.