`THEY DON'T LOOK POOR ENOUGH'
The media: Paul Johnson
on the sins of television documentary
THE latest Report of the Media Monitor- ing Unit on British television current affairs programmes, covering the period April-December 1988, detects signs of a distinct change. It begins to look as if the drive by John Birt to achieve greater objectivity and accuracy in the BBC cur- rent affairs presentation is having some effect. Birt told the Royal Television Soci- ety on 6 April 1988 that 'impartiality in broadcast journalism is a withering plant. . . . There are too many stitch-ups in our studios and on our films.' He promised to reassert 'the classic journalistic values of accuracy, impartiality and fair-minded-. ness'. To some extent that promise is being made good. There has been a notable change, for instance in Panorama prog- rammes. In 1985-6 the series achieved only 51.4 per cent of politically balanced prog- rammes, rising slightly to 57.1 per cent in the January-June 1987 analysis. In the period covered by the present Report, when 28 Panorama programmes were analysed, only two were judged to be politically biased, both to the Left, giving a balanced rating of 89.3 per cent (92.6 per cent if non-political programmes were ex- cluded). The BBC also received a good impartiality rating for its series On the Record. Of 38 reports monitored, only six were found to have shown bias, three to the Left, three to the Right, giving a rating of 84.2 per cent. According to the current report, the series 'proved conclusively that it is possible to broadcast an impartial current affairs programme that is both informative and entertaining in equal mea- sure'.
The Corporation, however, does not come out of the survey unscathed. It includes a special 'case study' of the BBC drama 'Airbase', broadcast on 1 March 1988, which in effect was a vicious attack on American Air Force men stationed in Britain, portraying them as drug- and drink-crazed, and anxious to bomb Russia. This play brought great discredit on the BBC and was virtually disowned by its management, the 1988 BBC Annual Re- port admitting that it 'took no great pride' in the broadcast. The BBC was also embarrassed by an accompanying article in the Radio Times, which was referred to the Press Council. The council reported that it was 'unfair and misleading . . . inaccurate and exaggerated'. Its adjudication added: 'Without consultation with [the author], the magazine and its publishers, the BBC, later declared that its publication was an error of judgment and apologised for it. The journal had had a change of editor in the meantime. It made no attempt to defend publication to the Press Council and, surprisingly, left the writer whom it had commissioned to defend the article it had published, alone.'
More seriously, the BBC-2 Open Space series came in for severe criticism. The Report says it 'easily won the award for the most biased, most partial series of prog- rammes on television'. Of the 18 program- mes monitored, 11 were political and only one of these was balanced; all the rest showed Left-wing bias, on such diverse subjects as supplementary benefits, educa- tion, homosexuality, water privatisation, industrial pollution and racism. 'None of these programmes made the slightest attempt to offer a balanced debate, nor was there a "balancing" programme, to put the other side of the argument, later in the series.' The Report also complains of se- rious lack of balance in non-political prog- rammes in this series, for instance on the ordination of women. (It might have added that the series, with one or two exceptions, is insufferably tedious: propaganda makes dull viewing.) All the same, the BBC is clearly making some attempts to recover its long-lost reputation for objectivity. But the other limb of the duopoly goes from bad to worse. As before, the Report found Chan- 'They cut off my body.' nel Four's A Week in Politics exemplary, with only one out of 23 programmes monitored showing lack of balance, giving it an impartiality rating of 95.7 per cent. But this series has now been dropped. Other ITV series got poor ratings. Of the 30 programmes of Woman in View which were monitored, 12 were political: seven were rated balanced, five biased, all to the Left. This Week broadcast 25 monitored programmes, 19 of them political. It achieved balance in 11 of them; the rest were biased, five to the Left, three to the Right. World in Action, as on previous occasions, is criticised for a heavy left-wing bias. Of 28 programmes monitored, five of them non-political, it managed to achieve balance on only ten occasions. All 13 of its politically unbalanced programmes showed a bias to the Left.
Media Monitoring Report justifies these figures with 66 pages of detailed assess- ment of the series monitored, and a further 72 pages of descriptive analysis of indi- vidual programmes in them. This is accom- panied by a description of its aims and methodology. I don't think any fair- minded person who actually troubles to read it through can fail to be concerned by the state of 'the best television system in the world', as its defenders laughably call it. If you don't believe me, look at the Report yourself: it is available from 10 Barley Mow Passage, London W4 (tel: 01-994 6477), price f9.95. The duopoly will soon be in its death-throes and there are some who wonder whether it is worth bothering to make efforts to get the Broad- casting Act enforced. I think it is: the blatant and unpunished flouting of an Act of Parliament tends to undermine the rule of law in general. Moreover, deliberate television bias is not merely unlawful, it is bad journalism. The Report quotes some remarks of Alan Whicker (23 April 1988): 'It seems to me that the trend is to write the script in the office, then go and find the facts and the people who will support the contentions.' That view is confirmed by the remarks of a television documentary re- searcher, Susan Wilkins, quoted in the Guardian (25 October 1988): 'Stories are constructed before you go out to find information, so the job then is to get facts to fit what you want to say.'
There is also something morally repug- nant in the contrast between this grubby quest for 'evidence' to justify a predeter- mined thesis and the loud-mouthed ideal- ism which most television documentaries profess. Behind the smug self- righteousness there is a cynical approach to truth. As Susan Wilkins put it: 'I found. myself in Liverpool staying at the Adelphl Hotel drinking cocktails, after which I would go out into Toxteth and say to people "Would you like to be on television talking about what it's like to be poor?' showed what I had to the executive pro- ducer who flexed her shoulder-pads at me and said: "They don't look poor enough.
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