Examination of Witnesses (Questions 320-330)
11 JANUARY 2005
MR BOB
SATCHWELL, MR
ROBIN ESSER,
MR MARK
EASTON AND
MS CLAIRE
POWELL
Q320 Mr Green: Do you cover that by giving
them a voice, as it were?
Mr Easton: Yes, I think we do.
I think sometimes we have not been as good as we might have been
in reflecting a strand of public opinion in Britain, belonging
to a white minority which does have strong views about this kind
of thing, that reflects some of the concerns we mentioned right
at the beginning of this session about asylum, immigration and
so on, and that actually—and I know this has been discussed
at senior editorial level—we should perhaps be looking more
to find ways, not so much to give a platform to people of racist
views but to try to understand why those views exist, and to talk
to people about the kinds of things that exist that lead them
to that assumption.
Ms Powell: Last year we actually
broadcast an entire day on asylum which ended with a large and
very lengthy studio debate on BBC1. There, whole different shades
of opinion were represented. I think our main aim was to keep
the debate exactly that: an articulate debate, and not to degenerate
into abuse or a slanging match. I think that was quite successful.
We certainly did show that there are many, many shades of opinion
within Britain.
Q321 Mr Green: May I turn to the newspapers.
One of the things we have heard fairly consistently from witnesses
is a distinction between local and national newspapers in their
coverage of community relations and tensions—in the broadest
sense, broadly speaking, saying what one might expect: that the
national press appears a bit broad-brush, a bit insensitive, whereas
the local press always is going to be back there next week and
so has more sensitivity essentially and is more balanced. Does
that reflect what you perceive?
Mr Satchwell: It is obvious that
local and regional papers are much closer to their communities.
There is something in that: they have to be there the next day,
the next week, the next month, the next year. Of course that is
true, and you would hope that they all do become close to their
communities—as I say, they have both the ethical and the
commercial reasons for doing that. But I think sometimes the criticism
of national papers can be exaggerated. There may well be a story
which flares up and it becomes a story worthy of national coverage
and comment. You cannot necessarily expect that you would get
the same sort of in-depth coverage about that story on a national
level as you would get from the local and regional papers, or,
indeed, with what might happen with local and regional broadcasting
from the BBC or commercial radio. They will keep going at it.
The real world is that some stories are very short lived on a
national stage but will be going on for a long time at a local
or regional level.
Q322 Mr Green: Is it likely in practical
terms to be a constraint, if you like, on getting the story or,
indeed, on the way you write the story? Do you think, "Well,
this is a good story but we may be leaving behind a very bruised
community"? Does that occur?
Mr Esser: I think those thoughts
always do occur, but there is of course one huge difference between
the national press and the local press and that is that in any
one community there is only one local newspaper and if the local
minority community has failed to get a voice in that one newspaper
it could go no further. There are at least 10 national newspapers,
and that voice, though it may not be heard in one newspaper, very
likely will get into another one. While of course I do not expect
everybody to read every national newspaper, the fact is that you
have a fantastic choice and a wide-ranging choice, both in terms
of politics and approach. If a local community wants to find a
voice, it is more likely to find it among 10 than one.
Q323 Mr Green: It is a good point. At
the BBC obviously you have both sides of this coin. Do you detect
a difference?
Mr Easton: I think it is exactly
the same. I think that local news/local radio has a much closer
and a different relationship with people locally. I think the
point Bob makes is a very good one: a story which bubbles up on
the national news and disappears very quickly is around a lot
longer locally. Part of what local radio and local television
is about is reflecting what is going on in their communities,
those issues which matter enormously to local people. There might
be, let us say, a really very positive story about a Muslim community
doing something locally which might well make its way onto local
radio and local television that would be much harder to justify
in a national news context, and therefore that is going to mean
that you do get a different relationship at local level, yes.
Q324 Mr Green: One final point is how
the technology affects things. Particularly, I suppose, with television,
stories have to be picture-led. This must make this area particularly
difficult. Three people chucking a few stones, if you have a camera
there, can become a much bigger story than 1,000 people feeling
deeply resentful about something but doing it peacefully. How
do you cope with that?
Mr Easton: It is undoubtedly true
that when Abu Hamza preached in the street rather than in the
mosque he was on television a lot more, but I think that was,
perhaps, in part, because there was a real event going on and
also, undoubtedly, because he is a very colourful character. To
that extent, yes, perhaps picture made those stories more attractive
to national news than they might otherwise have been. I think
you have put your finger on this whole issue: the fact is that
pictures are very difficult to come by, and actually I do not
think our coverage of terrorism and the problems of international
terrorism and al-Qa'eda are driven by pictures. In fact, it is
the other way around. There is a huge issue here, a huge subject
which requires our coverage, and often all that is going on within
it is outside and away from the cameras. That is a real difficulty
for us in covering this often very complex story, where a lot
of the information is quite difficult to nail down. You are dealing
with briefings with people who are certainly not going to go on
television about events which you do not see. I mean, these arrests
that we were talking about earlier, we very rarely see those happening,
of course—we might see a bit of the aftermath. The real
difficulty in covering terrorism properly on television is finding
clever ways to be both fair and objective and reflective of what
is really happening, and, at the same time, without the picture,
dealing with these very complex issues.
Q325 Chairman: Could I ask you a couple
more questions about the broader coverage of terrorism. I am assuming,
for the moment at least, that, wherever they come from, issues
of community sensitivity are more significant if people are very
worried about terrorism. I want to pursue two issues from earlier
sessions. There was a recent BBC deliberately provocative and
polemical series suggesting that there was quite a deliberate
attempt by politicians to heighten the fear of international terrorism
for political motives. I would like to be clear from each of you:
in the jobs you have, receiving information from a variety of
sources, is your real sense that you are at the receiving end
of a political strategy for heightening the fear of terrorism?
Or is it simply that there is a certain amount of terrorism, various
things might happen—you might get a statement by the Commissioner
for the Metropolitan Police who legitimately wants to report about
the likelihood of a terrorist attack—and that is actually,
taken together, creating a fear of terrorism? It is very important
for our report to have a sense of what you think is happening.
Mr Easton: The question was put
earlier and I think I said no in a pretty short answer. To expand:
I certainly do not believe that there is some kind of co-ordinated
office somewhere in Whitehall trying to change our coverage of
terrorism matters. I have no doubt that there will be occasions
when ministers, politicians, lobby groups, whether those be within
the Muslim community or elsewhere, will want to alert us in the
normal way or privately to make their point. That is part of the
way we work. It is the way that politicians work and, indeed,
the way that lobby groups work. Is it co-ordinated? Is it about
a government which is trying to scare the pants off Britain and
using us in a very deliberate way? I have to say I do not see
that. I genuinely have no experience of it myself. Talking to
colleagues, I do not think we have experienced that. I would say
this: if we had, I think we would probably report it.
Mr Satchwell: My feeling is that
there is an attempt to create this atmosphere of being alert but
not alarmed. That can of course be a political message but it
is not to say that it is not a political message which is valuable
to the public.
Mr Esser: I agree with what Mark
has said. There is of course a co-ordinated organisation called
the Media Emergencies Forum which meets at the Cabinet Office.
The freedom with which we all exchange information there is extremely
valuable. I think that if this happened on a wider scale it would
be a great improvement. But we always debate that fine line between
scaring the public and informing the public; keeping the public
alert and reassuring them. I can assure you that the conclusions
of those debates shutter down to the newspapers and to the broadcasting
organisations—all of which are represented on that Committee—and
discussions there with the police and with the anti-terrorist
security people and all the rest of it are extremely valuable.
I would say, once again, we are not complacent. We do listen and
there is a gradual improvement in the sense of responsibility
that we all bear in covering terrorism.
Q326 Chairman: That is very helpful.
I will now switch to the last few questions on anti-social behaviour.
We know that one-third of the public say in things like crime
surveys that they have a significant fear of anti-social behaviour,
however that is defined. That has apparently grown over the last
five to 10 years. Do you each feel that media reporting of anti-social
behaviour—one survey said there were 945 uses of the word
"yobs" in headlines in the tabloid press last year—has
helped to contribute to that fear of anti-social behaviour?
Mr Esser: I hope the media have
explained the situation to those communities who suffer from it.
After all, it is not that it appears in the newspaper, it is the
fact that it appears on the community streets and houses that
really creates the fear. People see it. In some cases they do
not need the newspapers or television to tell them about it. I
think the naming of various young men or young youths—they
are not necessarily, unfortunately, boys—who receive ASBOs
is a valuable contribution to justice. It normally happens following
a direction from a judge who says that he believes they should
be named, because, as you know, there are strict laws in terms
of naming young people. Recently you saw the case of the 13-year
old drunk driver who was pictured both on television and in newspapers.
I think that probably has a dual effect of alerting the public
and hopefully bringing the parents to realise their responsibilities
towards such children.
Mr Easton: Does our coverage of
anti-social behaviour contribute to people's fear of anti-social
behaviour? Obviously it does. People's perception of the world
around them comes from their experiences on the doorstep and what
they see on television and read in the papers and listen to on
the radio. We are conscious, though, of the responsibility we
have in this area. I think we have come a long way. When I joined
the BBC in 1985, I think you would look at the television bulletins
at that time and find it was absolutely chock-a-block full of
court cases, rapes and murders and dreadful other stories and
arrests and so on. I think there was a feeling that that really
was out of proportion and we have moved away from that and certainly
do not have that same philosophy now. So far as anti-social behaviour
is concerned, I would say that in a way the media have woken up
to this and perhaps the politicians have woken up to this rather
late. This has been an issue, I would say, of huge concern to
many of your constituents for a long time. It probably worries
them far more than al-Qa'eda and possibly more than asylum and
immigration put together. The fact that we talk about it so much
at the moment is probably reflective of the fact that politicians
. . . indeed, hardly a week went by when David Blunkett was Home
Secretary without a speech on this very subject. I am sure he
was trying to reflect what he felt to be true and, indeed, it
seems to be borne out by all the evidence that the public are
indeed very concerned about it. We were talking earlier about
atomised societies and my view would be that this is all part
of that, in a sense, and people's sense of fear of the world around
them is because they feel quite isolated and a bunch of youths
hanging around on a street corner feels threatening.
Q327 Chairman: Mr Satchwell, you were
nodding. Do I take it that you broadly agree with your colleagues?
Mr Satchwell: Absolutely. I have
been involved in debating these kinds of issues about fear of
crime for an awful lot of years and it became obvious a long time
ago that the main fear that people have of crime is not about
gunmen going and raiding the local bank or murder and mayhem—because
they do not very often see it, it is relatively rare. People are
worried about not being able to walk down the street without being
yelled at or bumping into young people with cans of lager or whatever.
It is that low-level crime which is the problem. It is about anti-social
behaviour in the sense that communities have broken down. Anti-social
behaviour orders are seen, I think by most editors, as being very,
very useful in terms of letting the community see that something
is being done about the kind of crime which causes the most heartache
and fear, and it also gives an opportunity for the local papers
particularly to name those people, to let the rest of the community
help police the streets, if you like. As one editor said to me
only yesterday, "What's the point of having an ASBO made
out if you cannot name the people involved in it? How can you
explain something that is antisocial unless you make it a very
public thing? It has to be out in the public domain."
Ms Powell: May I add that, when
it comes to commissioning documentaries on anti-social behaviour,
particularly when it concerns young people, we always take care
to understand whether this is a recurring problem or simply a
one-off. Is it something which the police know about and that
the authorities have been told about repeatedly? Or is it perhaps
a passing occurrence? Particularly when very young people are
concerned and those young people have not been issued with anti-social
behaviour orders, you have to take great care in exposing, say,
the child of 11, 12, 13 to the national public whole when they
may just be having a silly one-off incident. I think we have to
take great care on what we commission and what the background
evidence for that commission is.
Q328 Mr Green: That is a very interesting
and relevant point to the ASBO issue and, in a sense, it answers
one of the questions we were thinking of, which is: Do you think
it is always right to name and shame in the case of ASBOs? Is
it an implicit assumption that if a young child or an adolescent
has an ASBO against them, then there is enough recurrent behaviour
there that you will say that this is an individual that needs
naming and shaming?
Mr Satchwell: That is perhaps
a matter for the courts. It takes a long time before it gets to
that ASBO. I guess you are saying that if a young person of 11
or 12 has committed some kind of misdemeanour as a one-off, should
it be put on the front page of the local paper? Well, I can see
obviously that there may be a good case for that not happening.
If ASBOs are going to work as part of public policy, there should
be a general assumption, if they are orders which are applied
after a long period of anti-social behaviour, that there will
be publicity following it unless there is a good reason for not
having that publicity. That is the opposite of the case now, where
you have to fight to get the publicity.
Q329 Mr Green: Do you agree with that,
Mr Esser?
Mr Esser: I do. The Daily Mail
coverage of the drunk driver you have mentioned has a list of
the charge sheets against the boy—six offences. Obviously
that material came from court, obviously the judge wanted it published,
and obviously the newspaper did so because that is the responsible
way of dealing with this matter. But, as I say, you cannot name
a youth unless the judge specifically says that he believes you
should. By and large I think the judiciary balance pretty well
the needs of young offenders with those of the public good.
Q330 Mr Green: Do you think it is sensible
that you can name and shame in relation to ASBOs but not in relation
to youths of other offences? We seem to have landed ourselves
with a slightly incoherent set of policies there.
Mr Esser: Yes. Very often journalists
and court reporters challenge the decision not to allow publicity
and from time to time they succeed when the judge decides that
the public good be served by naming. I do not think the situation
is ideal but I do think that young people by and large should
be given every chance to reform without publicity.
Chairman: Are there any further questions?
In which case, may I thank you very much indeed for your evidence
this afternoon. It has been very helpful.
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