Latest News...        Summer 2008 Newsletter
Torture for entertainment on five

IF YOU ARE A YOUNG PERSON, WATCH TV, LISTEN TO RADIO OR USE BBC LEARNING WEBSITES - WHY NOT GIVE THE BBC YOUR VIEWS!
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GOVERNMENT LAUNCHES NEW UK COUNCIL FOR CHILD INTERNET SAFETY
FAMILIES AT THE FOREFRONT OF MAKING THE INTERNET SAFER
Some of the biggest names from industry and charities have joined forces with the Government, parents and young people to help keep children safe online, Children's Secretary Ed Balls and Home Secretary Jacqui Smith announced today. 

The new UK Council for Child Internet Safety (UKCCIS) will unite over 100 organisations from the public and private sector working with Government to deliver recommendations from Dr Tanya Byron's report ‘Safer Children in a Digital World'. 

Reporting directly to the Prime Minister, the Council will help to improve the regulation and education around internet use, tackling problems around online bullying, safer search features, and violent video games.  This unprecedented coalition of experts and organisations will ensure that parents and young people have a voice in the development of a Child Internet Safety Strategy, to be delivered early next year.
DCSF News release 29 September 2008
Read more...     The Executive Board     Focusing on The Byron Review

Speaking today John Beyer, director of mediawatch-uk said: "We very much welcome the new Council and wish it every success in its endeavours.  Many parents are very worried and concerned about the offensive and harmful material so easily accessible on the Internet.  We hope that the Council will provide a much needed forum where these issues can be raised and properly considered. 

The highest priority for the Council is the protection of children and the Prime Minister was right to set it up.  We hope that other countries will follow the example we have set in the UK and we hope it will lead directly to an International Treaty on content that will effectively require the plethora of pornographic and violent imagery currently available to be taken down and the stopping of new offensive and harmful imagery being uploaded."

GOVERNMENT TO TIGHTEN UP WEB CONTROLS
The culture secretary, Andy Burnham, said today that the government plans to crack down on the internet to "even up" the regulatory imbalance with television.  Burnham, in a keynote speech at the Royal Television Society conference in London, said that a fear of the internet had caused a loss of confidence that had robbed the TV industry of "innovation, risk-taking and talent sourcing" in programming. 

Following the speech Burnham fielded questions from the floor, including one asking him to expand on the topic of the internet and the TV industry.  "The time has come for perhaps a different approach to the internet," he said. "I want to even up that see-saw, even up the regulation [imbalance] between the old and the new." 

He said that perhaps the wider industry, and government, had accepted the idea that the internet was "beyond legal reach" and was a "space where governments can't go". Burnham said that he would like to "tighten up" online content and services and "lighten up" some regulatory burdens around the TV industry.
MediaGuardian 26/9/2008
Read more...     The Byron Review     New Treaty Needed...    Read speech

YouTube BANS VIDEOS WHICH GLAMORISE GUNS & KNIVES
The Google-owned video sharing website YouTube has moved to counter criticism that it helps fuel gang violence by introducing new rules to ban submissions that glamorise guns and knives. The UK-specific rule will ban videos "showing weapons with the aim of intimidation" after criticism that fierce battles were being fuelled by rival members posting videos.

Last summer the Guardian revealed how videos on YouTube displayed the "barely concealed culture of violent gangs glorying in crime" in the area of Liverpool where 11-year-old Rhys Jones was shot dead. In July the culture, media and sport select committee criticised the website, on to which 10 hours of video are uploaded every minute, for not protecting users enough from the "dark side" of internet content.

CULTURE SECRETARY, ANDY BURNHAM: WHY STANDARDS ARE IMPORTANT
My theme today is standards - and in some ways I want to rehabilitate the word. Call me old-fashioned, but for me standards are absolutely vital to everything we are considering - not just looking backwards but looking forwards as well. 

I will begin with broadcasting but will then apply some of the same thinking, same tests to the online world.  What do I mean by standards? I'm thinking of guiding principles like impartiality and accuracy in TV and radio news, the integrity of programme making and the 9pm watershed, protecting against harm and offence, that have stood us in good stead for years. These are principles that have stood us in good stead over the years.  

Why are these important? Standards are what have kept British broadcasting valued, celebrated and trusted in the UK and around the world.  And I think they are becoming more, not less, important to traditional print and broadcast media as we look to the future.  Being trusted has never been more important.

People are still relying heavily on TV news - despite the explosion in information sources. And trust is what people value most, particularly in news, as the Ofcom phase 1 PSB review recently found.  People, both at home and abroad,  look to British programming because they understand that it is produced to high standards, meaning they know they can trust what they are seeing and hearing. 

Lower standards and you lose the trust and the public support that goes with it.  Lose trust and you lower the quality, you lose innovation, you lose the ability of programme makers to take risks, you lose new possibilities, new talent goes undiscovered, and high quality programming is compromised. 

Another test of standards that is coming round the corner is product placement. As you know the Government is obliged to consider this as part of the implementation of the new Audio Visual Media Services Directive.  I can see the arguments and benefits of product placement and understand why people feel it is an inevitability given the pressures they are under. But applying the same test, I can also see the cost and the very high costs that might be paid in the long term. 

I feel there is a risk that product placement exacerbates this decline in trust and contaminates our programmes. There is a risk that, at the very moment when television needs to do all it can to show it can be trusted, that we elide the distinction between programmes and adverts.  As a viewer, I don't want to feel the script has been written by the commercial marketing director.
DCMS News release 11/6/2008
Read full speech     spring 2008 newsletter     Concerned about standards?

Speaking in June, John Beyer, director of mediawatch-uk, welcomed Mr Burnham's remarks saying that it was a great encouragement to know he, too, is concerned about standards and attaches great importance to this aspect of broadcasting.  "We look forward to seeing how Ofcom and the broadcasters respond." 

In a letter to the Prime Minister, John Beyer, director of mediawatch-uk said:

"Bearing in mind that the Government has itself launched an advertising campaign through the media, thus recognising the power of the media to influence behaviour, we believe that the time has come for the Government to make it clear to broadcasters and film-makers that the gratuitous portrayal of the use of guns and knives, merely for entertainment, is no longer tolerable given the situation we all face. 

If the necessary changes in attitude and culture are ever to be achieved we believe tackling the entertainment industries is essential no matter how contentious the task may seem."

MOST OF US AGREE - THERE IS TOO MUCH VIOLENCE & SWEARING ON TV!

THE MAIN FINDINGS OF A 'TASTE AND DECENCY' SURVEY CONDUCTED BY
Radio Times ARE THAT:

- 74% think there is too much violence on TV;

- 69% think there is too much swearing on TV;

- 52% think there is too much sex on TV;

- 40% think there is too much nudity on TV;

- 95% think the watershed is necessary.

Radio Times 24 - 30 May 2008
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THE REGULATOR'S REPORT
For four years running, the regulator OFCOM (the Office of Communications), has also found that the majority of people believe there is too much violence and swearing on television* but has done little to respond to these expressions of public concern. For these reasons, we launched an online petition to the Prime Minister calling for a substantial reduction in violence and swearing on TV.

The Communications Market 2007, published in August 2007, for the first time analysed separately figures for UK, England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.  For the UK as a whole:

• 55% believed there was too much violence and
  
• 53% believed there was too much swearing and
  
• 56% too much intrusion into people's lives (page 123).

The Communications Market 2006, published in August 2006, stated: "Over half believed there was too much:

• violence (56%),
  
• swearing (55%) and
  
• intrusion into people's lives (56%). 
  
• These fell by three, two and three percentage point respectively compared to the previous 12 months" (page 268).
  
• Only 1% said there was "too little" violence and swearing (page 269)."

The Communications Market 2005, published in July 2005, stated: "Clear majorities felt that there was too much:

• violence (59%),
  
• swearing (57%) and
  
• intrusion (59%) on TV, a similar pattern to last year" (page 264).
  
• Only 1% said there was "too little" violence and swearing (page 265)."

The Communications Market 2004 - Television, published in August 2004, found that:

• 48% of viewers said that standards of taste and decency had got worse (page 95),
  
• 56% said there was too much violence,
• 
  
• 54% too much swearing and
  
• 63% too much intrusion into other people's lives (page 97).

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