18/04/2013 - Ethical

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“The BBC exists to serve the public interest”

The BBC have to remain objective and ethical with everything they do, this means they must cater to all different Cultures, religions and sexual orientations, if they falter or insult any of these, or speak in bad tastes and insult the social acceptability of any person; or if anything is perceived incorrectly they could lose a portion on their viewership and also suffer from complaints sent of OFCOM or the Editorial Standards Committee. This could make the producers suffer with trust issues and be accused of failing to serve the correct interest to the public, which can lead to job cuts to either the producers of presenters/writers. 

The news must also cater to Events, say like recently the bombings in Boston, it would be in bad tastes and immoral for them to discuss how bombs can go to good use in mines and such without giving a warning that it could be triggering or without mentioning the bombings in Bristol or Birmingham recently.

They have to be careful with what they say, use of profanity is absolutely prohibited before the water shed and if it is said on something live and unable to be dumped or bleeped out in time it could provide serious repercussions, especially if it's in morning shows or at times when the main viewership is young children or older people.

Here's some of my bullet point notes on the subject:

·       Cultures

·      Social acceptability

·      Events

·      Morality

·      Is it correctly perceived

·      Tastes

·      Thin line – you’re either on it or you’re not.

·      The water shed/safe profanity use

·      Radio has no water shed

·      Violence and gore has a big audience

·      Imagination could be worse

·      VFX is better now so it’s worse, but better.

·      Media producers always from doing some work on ethical presentation of matters in relationship to regulatory bodies and codes of conduct as these should always be considered and some of them change over time

·      The moral principles that define how a person or group acts

Issues that affect TV producers:

·      Trust

·      Impartiality

·      Truth

·      Privacy

·      Serving the public interests

·      + more

Complaints:

·      OFCOM

·      Editorial Standards Committee

The BBC also have a whole website where you can read about their editorial guidelines. So if you think they did something wrong you can check there first before complaining, also if your complaint is false they will probably use this to say 'no, this is in the guidelines', so the editorial guidelines literally cover everything.  You can see them yourself right here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/editorialguidelines/guidelines/

-LJ