Brand-Ross scandal hits BBC

chris

The BBC has been fined a record £150,000 for breaches of the Ofcom Broadcasting Code. The fine refers to two – now notorious – radio shows transmitted on October 18 and 25 last year, by Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross. The fine is the largest-ever levied against the BBC.

“The scale of the fine reflects the extraordinary nature and seriousness of the BBC’s failures and the resulting breaches of the Code,” stated Ofcom in its adjudication.

The BBC’s statement, “accepted Ofcom’s findings. As we said last October, this material should never have been broadcast and we apologised unreservedly for that. We note that Ofcom has found that senior management acted swiftly to mitigate the offence and damage caused by the breaches of the Code. The BBC has since taken comprehensive action to deal with what were unacceptable failures in editorial judgement and compliance which led to the broadcast. This has included a comprehensive review of compliance across Audio & Music, and a new policy ensuring presenters and their agents cannot be the Executive Producer responsible for compliance on their own shows. In addition and as is well-known, two very senior managers and Russell Brand resigned and Jonathan Ross was suspended without pay for 12 weeks."

Some members of parliament are suggesting that Brand and Ross should be paying the Ofcom fine, not the British public via the BBC licence fee.

Ofcom explained the background to the problem: “The BBC broadcast explicit, intimate and confidential information about Georgina Baillie, the granddaughter of the actor Andrew Sachs in both programmes without their consent. This not only unwarrantably and seriously infringed their privacy but was also gratuitously offensive, humiliating and demeaning.”

“Broadcasters must be permitted to enjoy the creative freedom to explore issues and ideas without undue interference. Creative risk is part of the BBC’s public service role, however, so is the management of that risk. In this case, Ofcom’s investigation revealed that despite the Russell Brand show being considered by the BBC to be ‘high risk’ prior to these episodes, the broadcaster had ceded responsibility for managing some of that risk to those working for the presenter, Russell Brand. The presenter’s interests had been given greater priority than the BBC’s responsibility to avoid unwarranted infringements of privacy and minimise the risk of harm and offence and to maintain generally accepted standards.”

Ofcom identified six underlying flaws in the BBC’s compliance systems:

• a lack of clarity about the exact role of a senior figure at the agency that represents Russell Brand, as the Executive Producer, on behalf of the independent production company;

• the failure of the Executive Producer to attend a BBC Safeguarding Trust compliance course, despite this being a condition of the production contract;

• the failure of the Executive Producer to sign off compliance forms for these programmes, despite this also being a condition of the production contract (it was not known whether he signed off previous forms);

• no proactive testing and insufficient monitoring of the compliance systems in BBC Audio and Music in general, but especially after Russell Brand became an independent production from May 2008;

• an unacceptable conflict of interest for the Line Producer seconded from the BBC on a part-time basis to the independent production company making Russell Brand; and

• a lack of clarity about who at the BBC had editorial oversight of the series.

These overall weaknesses set the scene for the very serious failures of the BBC’s compliance systems that resulted in the repeated broadcast of exceptionally offensive, humiliating and demeaning material. These failures included:

• no senior manager at Radio 2 listened to the pre-recorded programme of 18 October 2008 in its entirety before broadcast;

• there was a failure to obtain the informed consent of Andrew Sachs;

• there was no attempt at all to obtain consent from Georgina Baillie as required by our Code and the BBC’s own Editorial Guidelines; and

• the failure to complete and submit the compliance forms for Russell Brand before the broadcast on 18 October 2008.

“Ofcom welcomes the BBC’s assurances about improving compliance. However, Ofcom was concerned that it had received similar assurances as recently as the summer of 2008, following its investigations into competitions and voting in BBC programmes. Ofcom therefore expects BBC management to ensure that these latest improvements are fulfilled effectively and quickly.”


Source:RapidTVNews

Channel Hopper

So now the licence payer ends up covering the cost of employing those two idiots, twice.

There is a very fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness"

dvmedia

All those thousands of morons that complained that never even heard the broadcast have ROYALLY shot themselves in the foot!!

It bugs me as it's just censorship. It was a dumb comment but now 'ruder' comedy will now be curbed as the BBC are afraid of a repeat.

To top it off it has cost US the money!

Utterly, totally, 100% laughable !

Channel Hopper

This fine would have happened with just the original complainants, a breach of code is a breach of code.

There is a very fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness"