Surreptitious Recording, Surreptitious Pitching and more Surreptitious Broadcasts

Surreptitiousness seems to be the flavour of the week as I go through my notes.

Surreptitious recording – well, this was only one aspect of our session on Producers’ Guidelines. These guidelines are issued by the BBC for their staff and are available on-line if you type in “Producers’ Guidelines” in the Search box. The class was assigned one section each, and we presented our summaries in class.

It was a nightmare reading the chapters. For one, I had to to read it on-line which meant having to scroll constantly. Secondly, it’s organized very badly i.e. not meant for web publishing. Thirdly, the redundancy due to wordiness and repetition is utterly frustrating. (In Singapore we would call it “kiasuism” or “cover your backside”).

Aside from that, I think it’s an excellent idea to have guidelines listed out so clearly. We should issue similar guidelines and give junior broadcasters a crash course at the start of their career. I would have found it useful to have been given directions on reconstruction of events, anonymous sources, sensitivity to offence and outrage, where the broadcaster is the story, programme repeats.

Surreptitious recording cannot be broadcast without consent from those recorded. There was one case where a couple was seen on TV in the background, and that was the first time the husband realized his wife was having an affair. It was just unfortunate for the people involved, but they weren’t the focus of that shot, so no case.

There are other areas – impartiality, accuracy, fair and straight dealings, interviewing, use of children in programmes, social action, defamation, contempt, copyright, truth and decency, etc. Most of it is common sense really, but there were some interesting bits:
● Journalism is the DNA of the BBC.
● A reporter may express a professional, journalistic judgement but not a personal opinion (one could surely argue that all opinions are clouded by personal judgement, but the lecturer did not seem to understand that point).
● Series that present a particular perspective are acceptable, as long as in the year preceding / following, there must be broad range of views and perspectives of similar type and weight.
● For anonymity, it’s better to use someone else’s voice because pixillation and voice effects can be reversed.
● Radio’s core audience is deemed younger, so taste and decency must be maintained all times. TV’s watershed is 9pm. Innuendo is acceptable on speech radio.
● Blasphemy is a criminal offence.
● A child is defined as anyone under the age of 16. In an interview setting, interviewers are specifically told to avoid leading questions.
● There’s a special phone catalogue used for drama purposes to avoid innocent people being bombarded by calls.
● Advertising is taboo, so you would have to eat multi-coloured chocolate buttons with a dark-coloured fizzy drink that contains caffeine.
● Care has to be taken when recording incidental sound. A band which was heard in the background sued, successfully for performers’ fees.

Surreptitious pitching - we had a representative of Endemol (one of UK’s largest independent production houses) come in for a guest lecture. It reaffirmed what we suspected all along – it’s all about money and sleaze.
· “Who wants to be a Millionaire?” was pitched to the broadcaster by having the game played with real money, which the players kept of course.
· A programme about the negative effect of sex was pitched by insisting that the sex bits be shown first – this is one technique of getting X-rated material on air, when it would otherwise have been rejected.
· “You don’t have to tell the truth” – for a reality show, a Shaolin martial arts expert wasn’t actually one.
· Get sloshed to generate ideas.

Surreptitious broadcasts. Now this issue, raised in David Hendy’s book, is the most interesting. In the past radio was used to get crude propaganda across to a war-torn audience. But because radio now largely involves passive listening, the “impact on the audience is less dramatic and more insidious: it no longer shouts at us, but it does gently massage away the pains and confusions of modern living, drawing us into a passive acceptance of the world”. Whoa, think of all the untapped power here! Watch out Hitler.