Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60-79)
MR MICHAEL
GRADE CBE AND
MR SIMON
SHAPS
24 JULY 2007
Q60 Paul Farrelly: When will that
happen do you think?
Mr Grade: I am in the hands of
Deloitte's. I would rather have it right than have it now. It
may be a month or two away, I do not know. I am not chasing for
it. I want it right and I want it fully comprehensive.
Q61 Paul Farrelly: Is it your intention
to publish the report or simply the actions you are going to take
consequent to it?
Mr Grade: We will publish the
findings of the report and we will publish in full the action
that the Board finally approves us taking in response to that
report, yes.
Q62 Paul Farrelly: You said in your
television speech, to quote you: "I don't know yet what the
report will contain but in its present form it can make uncomfortable
reading."
Mr Grade: I do not think I said
"in its present form". "On present form",
not "in its present form".[2]
Q63 Paul Farrelly: The transcript says
otherwise.
Mr Grade: Somebody has been editing
your notes! On present form, given what is emerging, I would be
surprised if it gave us a clean bill of health given what all
of us know. I have no more information than you ladies and gentlemen
have.
Q64 Chairman: Would you like to comment
on the Sunday newspaper reports identifying several programmes
that are apparently in breach?
Mr Grade: Pure speculation. They
have no knowledge.
Q65 Paul Farrelly: I think it is
the Royal Television Society itself that was editing our reports
because your speech seemed to suggest that you knew certain things
that had not come out in public yet. Clearly one of the things
that we want to know is what will be the consequences and, in
particular, the Panorama programme identified a substantial
amount of money that may have been taken from viewers, of the
order of £10 million over a long period of time, from one
programme on GMTV. You are a 75% shareholder of GMTV.
Mr Grade: I am not a member of
the Board of GMTV but we are of course a shareholder of GMTV.
I would expect in the next few days a formal announcement from
the Board of GMTV about what action it is taking to make good
any damage that may have been done. I think we can expect that
in the next few days. I do not determine the timing of the announcement
but I made enquiries before coming here this morning, and I expect
an announcement from the Board of GMTV in the next few days.
Q66 Paul Farrelly: Can I ask finally,
you were the Chairman of the BBC between May 2004 and November
2006 when many of the list of shame of breaches occurred. When
you were at the BBC was this an issue that exercised you at all?
Mr Grade: It is an issue that
has always exercised me in broadcasting, but in Mark Thompson,
who was appointed during my time as Chairman, and Mark Byford,
who was appointed Deputy Director-General in my time, I recognised
two individuals for whom the BBC meant upholding the highest possible
standards in broadcasting, and I would be confident as Chairman
of the BBC that they would have absolutely no knowledge of any
of this stuff going on and if they did they would be horrified,
and there is no way if the Director-General could not have known
what was going on at one removed, as a part-time non-executive
Chairman of the Governors outside of the operations of the BBC,
it would be impossible to know. I suppose the only good to come
out of the whole thing is that it is concentrating people's minds.
In the work of this Committee, the part the newspapers have played
in exposing some of this stuff, the whistle-blowing policies and
so on, we are flushing out a lot of this poison in the system,
and that in a way is a good thing. I wish it had not happened
at all but it is a good thing that we are on top of it.
Q67 Chairman: You listened to the
whole of the last session which some might see as a remarkable
exercise in self-flagellation. Given that you were actually there
for a large part of the period, do you feel it appropriate that
you too should take some responsibility?
Mr Grade: We are dealing with
misbehaviour, we are dealing with errant behaviour, dishonest
judgments made at differing levels in the day-to-day editorial
processes. There are programmes today on television which will
have anything from ten to 30 cutting rooms on the go round the
clock. It is impossible to know what is in the minds of people
at all editorial levels, whether they are researchers, producers,
directors, assistants, whatever they are, you cannot know what
is in their minds, and to have a realisation that there is a body
of people working in broadcasting today across the BBC, ITV, Channel
4 and everywhere else who do not know that there is a line that
you do not cross has come as something of a shock. It is not the
way I was brought up. It is not the way Mark Thompson, Caroline
Thomson and Mark Byford or any of us was brought up in broadcasting,
which was to cherish the values of honesty and integrity: you
do not deceive the viewers. The pressures today are so great.
I think it was Caroline Thomson earlier who used the phrase "the
show must go on". Well, I am sorry, no, the show does not
go on if it means deceiving the viewers. If we have to fall off
the air and there is a blank screen, so be it. Some people might
prefer that but it is not for me to judge! The pressures are great.
What we have to do is really a carrot and stick approach. We have
to reward people who come forward and say, "I am being asked
to do things I do not think are right," and we have to have
a stick which say anybody who is caught setting out to use the
arts and crafts of television deliberately to deceive the audience,
lie to the audience and cheat the audience will not be tolerated;
they are people we will not work with again. And it seems to me
that the way to get into the hearts and minds of the people in
these TV galleries and cutting rooms who are making these decisions
that are so wrong and so against everything all of us believe
about British broadcasting is the carrot and stick approach, and
that in the end will be the most effective. Obviously training
is important.
Q68 Chairman: Is this a crisis for
British broadcasting?
Mr Grade: I would rather call
it a catharsis than a crisis. I hope this will be very cathartic.
I saw this coming years ago. I went to America and I saw a very
wonderful movie that had just opened in America called Quiz
Show which Robert Redford directed about the great Payola
scandal about a show called Twenty One, where people were
given the answers and other things were fabricated pretending
to be real. I saw it in America and as soon as I got back to England
I summoned a three-line whip to all the commissioning editors
in Channel 4—I was Chief Executive at the time—to
watch the movie. They all thought it was a nice treat and we all
watched the movie, the lights went up at the end and everyone
said, "Oh, it was a great movie," and I said, "Right,
now, turn the lights up, we are going to have a debate about this."
I said, "The temptation is always there. We do not make our
own programmes. There are huge financial pressures on the independent
producers out there to get their order books filled, pay the wages,
make the profits and so on; they will be tempted and we have to
be on our guard." We had a big debate about it and it has
been in the back of my mind for years and as soon as I arrived
at ITV I was hit by the PRTS issue and my instant reaction was
to pull everything. In a crisis of trust and integrity, trust
is best restored by handling the issue openly and speedily and
transparently, and that is what we did. And I am glad that we
did it. The thing has been preying on my mind which is why I got
to The Case for Zero Tolerance, which is the title of the
speech I gave to the RTS three weeks ago, not knowing that this
stuff was brewing at the BBC, because I think it is an issue for
the industry. It appears to be of epidemic proportions. We do
not know if it is an epidemic yet. There are a lot of cases but
whether it is of epidemic proportions or not, we do not know.
More stuff is going to come out. We are all in this together.
I feel for the BBC because they are the lightning rod at the moment
that is attracting the flak (can a lightning rod attract flak?
I will not go there) but we are all in this together. There is
free traffic of talent across the BBC, ITV and the independent
production community. What they have got to understand is that
anybody who wants to make programmes for me had better understand
if they get caught setting out to deceive the public in any way,
shape or form, that is it; one strike and you are out.
Q69 Alan Keen: Do you think the BBC
should take that attitude with the people who have offended recently?
Mr Grade: People have rights and
there are disciplinary procedures to protect the individual which
one has to respect, but as soon as the facts are known, obviously
it is for them to decide what disciplinary action to take. I know
what action I will take if I find anybody working for me or subcontracted
to me who has set out deliberately to deceive and lie to the audience:
they will not work for me again.
Q70 Alan Keen: Did you notice this
reduction in accuracy and fairness leading to reduced trust come
over a period of time? What part was caused by pressure to produce
profits or to reduce losses and what part of it is related to
the general change in the public's attitudes and social changes?
Mr Grade: I think the definitive
answer to your question will not emerge for a little while yet
while we absorb every individual case. Many contributory factors
have been cited, some by me, including the casualisation of the
industry. I think there is an issue with independent producers
who do not share the pain of compliance breaches. We are, quite
correctly, as the broadcaster, responsible for compliance, but
if we delivered a show which we transmit in good faith as being
compliant and it turns out not to be, what has been the sanction
hitherto on an independent production company? The answer is they
have got to understand that there is a serious and lasting price
to pay if they knowingly deceive the broadcaster and bypass or
somehow subvert our own very robust compliance procedures. They
have got to share the responsibility as well. That has not happened
hitherto. That is why I took the action I did when I read about
the RDF case and I sent immediately for the Chief Executive of
RDF. We have a whole roster of programmes that we have already
commissioned from RDF which I will not interfere with because
you are innocent until proven guilty in this country but pending
the outcome of the BBC inquiry we are not going to give them any
more commissions. That is a signal not just to RDF but to the
whole independent sector that compliance is not something that
is nothing to do with them, it is very much to do with them, and
there is a price to pay if they first of all mislead the audience
but then mislead us and subvert our compliance responsibilities,
they will pay the price as well.
Q71 Chairman: But you are not suggesting
that Ofcom should extend to production companies their powers
to impose penalties?
Mr Grade: Regulation has a place
in this. The problem with regulation is that the regulation only
comes in after the fact. I am trying to deal with this before
it gets to Ofcom. I do not want anything to have to get to Ofcom
because it means it will have been transmitted and there will
have been a complaint and we will have failed. I want to get at
the problem before it gets to Ofcom. Ofcom is an ex post facto
regulator.
Q72 Alan Keen: I was never in favour
of this insistence on a target of 25% for the BBC using independents.
Do you think that we should take those targets away from the BBC
and let it all be done in-house?
Mr Grade: If there is an argument
to be had about quota for the independent sector, I think it is
a competition and market argument. I do not think it is an argument
that can be resolved on the issue of trust and integrity.
Q73 Alan Keen: Finally, the BBC has
been under attack by those who want to get rid of the licence
fee because of digitalisation and everything else. Do you think
if the BBC handles it properly it could actually strengthen the
BBC rather than weaken it, which is the first danger that comes
to mind?
Mr Grade: It is all in the handling.
When you have a crisis of this nature (in media terms not in the
great scale of human endeavour, let us get it into context) in
terms of the market and the world in which we work, this is about
as serious as it gets because this is self-inflicted. This is
not an argument between a broadcasting organisation and a politician
or the Prime Minister of the day or whatever, this is self-inflicted,
if you like, and it is pretty much as serious as it gets. I have
every confidence in the BBC Trust and the Executive Board of the
BBC to manage this crisis in a way that will enable the public's
confidence in the BBC to be restored and we for our part at ITV
are trying to do the same. We are trying to manage these problems
in a way that is open and transparent, and that is the only way
in which public trust will be restored quickly. It is possible
because there is goodwill towards the BBC from the British public,
there is goodwill towards ITV and towards Channel 4 and Channel
Five. It definitely has been bruised (at best) and the repair
will come from the way we handle the crisis.
Q74 Chairman: You imposed a sanction
on RDF by saying that you were not going to commission any further
programming. A lot of attention has been given to RDF but RDF
is not alone. One company which has lurked behind a number of
these revelations is Endemol, which has not had much public attention.
Are you imposing stricter requirements or are you imposing sanctions
on other production companies that are found to be responsible
for breaches of the Code?
Mr Grade: I may be wrong here
but I think I am right—and I will wait for Simon to correct
me if he has better knowledge than I do—as I understand
it, Endemol is the subject of some Ofcom complaints at the moment
and when we see the results of that if Endemol or any other production
company is proven to have deliberately set out to deceive and
lie to viewers and cheat the viewers, we will not do business
with them. It is as simple as that. Zero tolerance means exactly
what it says at the end of the day and there will be zero tolerance.
Q75 Helen Southworth: You have made
some fairly clear comments about zero tolerance. You have also
made it fairly clear to us that you are happy to have words with
people if you do not think their standards are up to scratch.
Do you think that within that environment it is okay to say that
something is "not completely misleading" or "not
a direct deceit", in other words "only deceived a bit",
or do you think the difference is around perhaps intent? Would
you be going for a Guardian style where you publish your
mistakes the next day?
Mr Grade: Well, there are arts
and crafts associated with the production of television programmes
which enhance your ability to tell stories and, by and large,
most television programmes tell a story. You use the skills and
the crafts and the technology to help you to tell that story as
effectively and as compellingly as you possibly can in the same
way that in the print publishing world J K Rowling has an editor
who helps her to hone her copy, her manuscript into a form which
is as perfect as you can possibly get it, and there are those
tools of the trade. You can deploy those tools in a way which
is designed to deceive, alter the meaning, lie to the audience,
and so on. You can use them to that effect and that is the line
that you must never cross.
Q76 Helen Southworth: Is it okay
to do it "just a bit"?
Mr Grade: No it is not, unless
you mean by "just a bit" that you are using the normal
rules of television grammar to present a story, to edit an interview
in a way that does not change the meaning but just gets to the
issue—
Q77 Helen Southworth: Just implies
things are different?
Mr Grade: Deceit is an absolute.
There is no such thing as a "slight" deceit, there just
is not.
Mr Shaps: Can I just add a comment
on that. Listening to the discussion earlier about the lifestyle
programme that you raised, I think there is a fundamental issue
here which is to do with the fact that most television is edited
in some way and the editing process necessarily shortens the time-frame.
After all, literally watching the paint dry would not constitute
good television and therefore I think compacting a timescale is
an entirely acceptable process. What I think Michael, and indeed
the BBC were suggesting, is that the fundamental misrepresentation,
the deceit of the audience and lying about what it is that you
are depicting are clearly unacceptable. The natural and inevitable
process in a construction of a piece of television which involves
editing, shortening, summarising is a perfectly understandable
editorial and indeed journalistic process. The standards of accuracy
are very clear in journalism and I think that the standards of
accuracy and honesty are clear in terms of the broad range of
programmes that we are responsible for.
Q78 Helen Southworth: So, for example,
reordering of events to imply that somebody knew about something
that they in fact did not know about would be acceptable or not
acceptable?
Mr Shaps: If in your characterisation
of that—and I am not sure whether that is an abstract example
or specific example—if in the representation of that you
are asking the audience to believe something that was fundamentally
untrue about that particular episode or incident, then I think
we have a clear burden of responsibility not to do that.
Q79 Chairman: Michael, you suggested
that the standards which you and other senior broadcasters were
brought up to believe in have maybe slipped in recent times, which
is a worrying development, but in the RTS speech you also highlighted
for instance the old Saturday afternoon wrestling which actually
now appears to have been completely fixed from start to finish
and yet the viewers were led to believe that this was a genuine
match. Are you therefore not actually imposing higher standards
than may have pertained say 20 or 30 years ago?
Mr Grade: I think so, yes. I think
"transparency" is a word that is much in vogue, and
for good reason, and I think today if we were running the wrestling
we would run it because it is entertaining and it is harmless,
but we would run it with a clear disclaimer that some of the moves
may have been rehearsed!
2 Note by witness: Actual speech transcript
read: "I don't yet know what the report will contain, but
on present form it could make uncomfortable reading." Back
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