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YOUR SAY Missing piece of the In Our Time: women feel welcome Open letter to John


Hamer, BBC Trust Is there a way the Trust might con- gratulate In Our Time for setting the standard for the BBC in ensur- ing the UK’s women get included on programmes on merit, and are made to feel welcome, rather than being made to feel like intruders on such old-style male constructs as Question Time? Over the past three years, 42.5% of guests have been women compared with the 19.1% of professors that are female. Last week’s edition on Malthusianism was again exemplary: two out of the three academics were women. Over the past 35 years, I have


been involved in worldwide advo- cacy bringing the media into the real world, where women are offered the opportunity to contribute to public discussion, but In Our Time is the first BBC programme I have come across that sets the standard. It should be used as an example to


such programmes as Question Time, where producers once told me: “We invite women but all too often they refuse because it is a daunting and combative atmosphere.” QT ought, therefore, to portray


itself as a political version of Gladi- ators, such is the continuing dis- service it does to good journalism and the fee-paying public. Millions of us sincerely want to hear what women have to say. Tim Symonds, partner, Eyecatcher/ Shevolution consultancy


TALKING POINT


This week we ask: Do you expect the BBC to introduce more red tape following the Panorama report?


Vote at www.broadcastnow.co.uk www.broadcastnow.co.uk


compliance jigsaw Thank you for covering compliance in last week’s issue (‘Does red tape have a stranglehold on TV?’ Broad- cast 24/06/11). It is good to see that the ITV Network comes out of your survey well. However, it would have been helpful had the piece noted the role Channel Television plays in complying independent productions on ITV1. Since 2000, we have been providing a compliance service to ITV Network and some of the inde- pendent producers it commissions to make a wide range of productions. Your indie survey showed that


we complied four of the top 10 ITV suppliers by hours and seven by value in 2010. There is some overlap between both lists but those that appeared were (in no particular order): Talkback Thames, Spun Gold, Prospect Pic- tures, Bentley Productions, Kudos Film & TV, Carnival, Company Pic- tures and Avalon. We’re very proud to have had a small, but vital, part in the success of their ITV1 shows. Claire Telford, head of compliance, Channel Television


Response on broadcastnow.co.uk to Neil Percival’s column ‘Taking the minimum wage one step further’ (Broadcast, 24/06/11) “One thing is clear: the anti-unpaid work campaign is getting a rougher ride in the film industry than it did six years ago in TV.” To a large extent, that’s because it is misun- derstood. Neither Bectu nor the Sweat campaigners have any objec- tion to genuine collaborative projects. However, the problem for those at entry or junior level is iden- tifying which are collaborations and which are commercial projects masquerading as such. I would like to see groups like Shooting People embracing a sort of kitemark scheme, so that projects could show themselves to be genuinely collabo- rative and non-profit-making. Benetta Adamson, freelance factual producer/director


Broadcast, Greater London House, Hampstead Road, London NW1 7EJ or email bcletters@emap.com


IN MY VIEW


Don’t punish us producers for Panorama’s mistakes


Lessons can be learned from the Primark case, but let’s not overreact, says David Henshaw


pound of flesh last week, and the masters of the uni- verse Roy Greens-


W


lade and Steve Hewlett went into overdrive. It was either lynch mob justice (Prof Greenslade) or a dark day for investigative journal- ism on the box (Hewlett). Either way, the BBC Trust’s censure of Panorama for the apparent, or potential, faking of a 45-second sequence in Primark: On the Rack seemed to generate something close to hysteria. Ah yes, we’ve been here before:


Queengate, Gilligan, Ross/Brand. And every time, the BBC goes into corporate hari-kiri mode: systems have failed! Something will have to be done! The truth is that the lessons to be learned from Primark are clear. Let me list them: Complaints. It took three years


and two separate complaints proce- dures to deal with the Panorama case. It is a nonsense, in a multi- channel broadcasting era, that the BBC should have a complaints procedure separate from everyone else. Bring all complaints under the Ofcom umbrella. They’re quicker, there’s only one of them, and they come up with reports written in language devoid of cor- porate pomposity. Best practice. Don’t make pro-


ducers sign up to a 20-minute online module proving that we won’t fake sequences. You can’t teach honesty. Good practice should be part of the culture. Gilli- gan should have taken contempo- raneous notes. So should Dan McDougall, in this case. It’s the bleeding obvious, as any broadcast lawyer will tell you. Please, no new Ed Pol guidelines; no new systems. Trust the producer. It took four


months and two trips for the Primark film to be commissioned. Broadcasters have become increas- ingly cautious about greenlighting


ell, Primark had its


even companies with a proven track record in investigative journalism, which means the pressure to come up with the killer sequence while you’re still in development is over- whelming. Showing trust in the team and the story early on will probably avoid the kind of truth- stretching, or even fakery, that pro- ducers may be guilty of in their des- peration to win the commission. Editors: have the guts and the instinct to greenlight films before you’re guaranteed the Bafta.


‘Editors: have the guts and instinct to greenlight films before you’re guaranteed a Bafta’


Investigative journalism on TV


is becoming more important in an infinitely fragmented digital uni- verse where demented conspiracy theories are driving out a rigorous, forensic approach to stories. At its best, television journalism embar- rasses all the great systems and regulatory bodies that as a society we rely on. Panorama’s exposé of abuse in an apparently perfectly fine care home is one example. Our film for Dispatches on Monday on the resurgence of rent racketeers is another. The BBC’s Secret Police- man yet another. All these pro- grammes show, rather than tell. The worry is that, in the wake of


the Primark story, two things will happen: one, the BBC will engi- neer ‘newer and better’ systems to drive out dishonesty; and two, the paranoid tendency will dismiss the report as mere corporate bullying and BBC cowardice. No one should fall back on the


Piers Morgan defence (“OK, the photos were faked, but the bigger story was true”), but equally, no one who cares about investigative journalism should allow this to get in the way of their next story. ➤ David Henshaw is managing director of Hardcash Productions


1 July 2011 | Broadcast | 21


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