In article ,
Alex Heney wrote:
On Tue, 22 Jul 2008 12:20:07 +0100, Ian Jackson
wrote:
It seems to me perverse that C4 can escape from the duty to be
impartial or accurate _precisely_ because what they transmitted was
(in Ofcom's view) false. Or to put it another way, that false
assertions are less controversial than widely disputed ones.
....
But if something is genuinely settled in the public view, then showing
something which suggests one view or the other (either the "agreed"
view, or the "false" one) is not going to sway "public opinion" one
way or the other.

I disagree. After all the whole point of the programme was to sway
public opinion, and there is plenty of evidence to suggest that it
did.

Indeed if one takes the view that the programme wouldn't sway public
opinion because its contents were false, then surely that's because
the viewers would have discounted or ridiculed its content. Surely
the transmission of content so blatantly false that it is risible or
incredible can't be justified on the grounds that the public wouldn't
believe it anyway.

But even so you're neatly sidestepping my point which is that Ofcom
have apparently regarded something false as less controversial (and
hence deserving of the usual strictures regarding accuracy, etc.) than
something doubtful.

I suppose my point is really that Ofcom's position seems contrived.
They didn't want to censure the programme makers because they feel
that media freedom is important, or something, in some kind of woolly
postmodern way where what really matters is not what's true but what
people say.

They couldn't conclude that the programme was accurate, or that it
wasn't biased, or that it had been appropriately balanced elsewhere in
the way that a programme about a controversial subject ought to have
been. So they had to manufacture a view which would allow them to let
C4 off anyway and their report is the result.

Also, to be honest, I was astonished that the Communications Act
doesn't require Ofcom and broadcasters to be accurate in general
factual programming !

I this case, I strongly disagree with OFCOM's suggestion that the
matter is "settled", but that, as you say, is a side issue to the
point we are attempting to discuss.

If Ofcom had found that the issue wasn't settled then they would have
been bound to find that C4's duty to be accurate and impartial on
controversial questions had been breached.

Imagine these complaints had been about a program supporting the
"creationist" theory against Darwinism. Would you still say it was
important for them to be impartial?

I'm not sure I understand your point. Certainly I think that a
programme supporting creationism, standing on its own, would be very
troublesome because it's difficult to see how such a thing could be
accurate - but I should really try to keep my personal opinions out of
it. Would you perhaps like to choose an example that we're really all
like to agree on, or which we will all agree is in real doubt ?

Either one must regard creationism as nonsense and evolution as the
settled knowledge, or one must regard the question as controversial.
If the question is settled knowledge then a TV programme disputing it
would be ridiculous. In that view, why not a programme advocating the
flat earth theory ?

If we regard evolution as controversial then there is a duty to be
even-handed, which would probably mean presenting both sets of views
in the same programme or perhaps in two closely linked (and equally
heavily marketed) programmes, or something.

Acceptance of a premise in (eg) ordinary news broadcasting or by most
participants in the public sphere is not a counterweight to a specific
polemic challenging that view.

As an aside, I would say that impartiality is a fair and even-handed
approach to the problem, including a fair and even-handed approach to
the arguments and supporting evidence on all sides of a disputed
question. It doesn't mean that the conclusions are necessarily evenly
balanced.

If the arguments and evidence are predominantly one way or the other
then obviously there is still a duty to report the minority side in an
appropriate context. C4 claim that that is what they were doing here
but I would reject that.

--
Ian Jackson personal email:
These opinions are my own. http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~ijackson/
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