Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80-99)
MR MICHAEL
GRADE CBE AND
MR SIMON
SHAPS
24 JULY 2007
Q80 Chairman: You are not suggesting
to the Committee that you are going to bring back Saturday afternoon
wrestling?
Mr Shaps: It is not under active
discussion.
Mr Grade: My late uncle, Lord
Grade, used to squirm when he was summoned by the ITA as it was
in those days, and Lord Hill was then the Chairman, "Lord
Grade," he said, "the Authority wishes to know whether
the wrestling is fixed or not." Lew used to have great difficulty,
"Well, it sort of is and it isn't", he had great difficulty
answering that question.
Q81 Helen Southworth: Do you think
there is a difference between news programmes and others?
Mr Grade: Absolutely not. Absolutely
not. Once you start trying to draw different lines for different
genre—and there was somebody in the BBC who I was quite
critical of in my RTS speech who was trying to make out that if
there were shenanigans in light entertainment it did not affect
viewers' trust in the news. I think that is absolute nonsense.
It is an absolute rule: you do not deceive the viewers. Whether
you are doing a quiz programme, a cooking programme, whether you
are doing a report from Baghdad or whatever it is, the rule is
the same.
Q82 Chairman: Is there not evidence
emerging that this is endemic? We are getting examples almost
every day. We now have the example of the Bear Grylls programme,
there is the talk of Shark Week. It appears that almost
every single light entertainment programme has been fixed in one
way or another.
Mr Grade: It is much more prevalent
now. There were always rogue reporters or there was the odd rogue
producer that you had to manage very carefully in the old days.
"A bit of a chancer but he or she is very talented, keep
a very close eye." There was a handful in the whole industry
who you would keep an eye on and you would manage them very, very
closely. It is clear today that nowhere near the majority but
there are enough doing enough damage out there to bring broadcasting
into disrepute. Whether it is epidemic, whether it is endemic,
I am not sure yet. All I can do at the moment is to make sure
that anybody who works for me at ITV, independent or in-house,
understands that there is a line that you do not cross.
Q83 Rosemary McKenna: Michael, we
all support your striving for zero tolerance of deceit, it is
absolutely crucial to restore trust. Are you suggesting new compliance
rules? Do you think that we need new rules?
Mr Grade: I think internally our
compliance rules are pretty clear. I think in our training—sorry
about the jargon—modules our emphasis needs reworking so
that we give equal weight to this line that must not be crossed
as well as other issues of impartiality, fairness, covert filming,
product placement, all the issues that people get trained on.
I am not sure that we have quite got the emphasis right and we
will be doing that. Where I want to get to very, very quickly
is a database of people who have been through our compliance training
so that we get to a point where we have a growing database and
you do not get to work in an editorial capacity at any level for
ITV unless you have been through this course, and we will get
to that as quickly as it is practical to get to. In a sense, commercial
airlines do not let their pilots continue to fly unless they have
been through the simulator on a systematic basis. I want to have
a system where whether they are working for an independent producer
or working for us in-house, they cannot work on our shows unless
they have got a chit which we can check to see that they have
been through that system. Then they have got no excuse.
Mr Shaps: There is one other element
of that which I think is just worth noting which is whether it
is the airline pilot or the driver, what we now think is that
there is a need for regular annual checks, refresher courses,
because it may well be that ten years previously somebody went
on an induction course or there was a very good training course
at the beginning of the process, but what we now think, in the
light of this, is that we probably should introduce an annual
course for every single person who is editorially involved to
make it absolutely certain that they understand what we mean by
a zero tolerance policy. Whether it is young people in the industry
or older people, we do not quite know at this point. We will await
to hear what comes out of the Deloitte report and indeed out of
the BBC, but make no mistake about it, there will presumably be
people at a number of different levels involved in this and therefore
our view currently is that we need to ensure that there is annual
training for everybody within an organisation who has editorial
responsibility for the output.
Q84 Rosemary McKenna: And we understand
that Ofcom and the BBC Trust are convening across industry a summit
to discuss all the issues. What are the most important issues
apart from zero tolerance that have to be addressed at that summit?
Mr Grade: How do we get it across,
how do we get into the minds of editorial staff making choices
all day long, sometimes under pressure of live broadcasting and
so on, how do we get into their heads and stimulate their consciences
to know that in that split second they are going to come down
on the right side and make the right choice and not the wrong
one, and that means obviously the carrot and the stick. Knowing
that they will be supported, if the show falls off the air and
the climax of the show falls apart because the computer has broken
down because the phone calls have not come in and there is no
end result, you tell the audience, trust the audience with the
truth, and if it all collapses on air, so what, it is not the
end of the world, but we have retained our integrity. The price
of making the wrong decision and picking somebody out of the corridors
and sticking them on and saying, "Congratulations, you have
just won a trip round the world" is not the answer. It may
get you through the show and you have delivered the show but you
have destroyed trust. It is getting into the minds of these individuals
who are making these choices in stressful situations. They may
have a contract renewal coming up for themselves, they are on
short-term contracts, whatever: do not do it. It is a conscience
issue, it is a right and wrong moral issue. Codes and regulation
all play a part but what I am trying to get into is the minds
of today's programme-makers so they just would not go there, and
if they are asked to go there by somebody in authority they know
they will be supported by Simon and myself if it comes out that
they have been ordered to do it and they say no, and they get
fired or whatever happens, they will be supported by me, by Simon,
by the Board of ITV. People have to know that.
Rosemary McKenna: Thank you very much.
Q85 Mr Hall: We have taken evidence
recently about certain journalists using illegal means to get
personal information about stories that they are pursuing. In
your answer to Helen Southworth you referred to covert filming.
What is your view of that? Where do you draw the line on illegal
activity being involved in documentary film-making?
Mr Grade: Covert filming is not
illegal but if a film maker, either working for an independent
production company or for ITV, wishes to employ covert filming
techniques, there is a chain of referral up through the command
structure of ITV and they will have to make a pretty good case
as to why they want to do it, and that case has to be a public
interest case and they have to prove a) that it is the only reasonable
way they can get the story or check the story and b) that there
is a public interest in them getting that story. Those are really
the judgments that are made. Film-makers do not make decisions
on their own to go and film covertly; it just does not happen.
Mr Shaps: The process would have
to involve the compliance team within ITV. There is about a 30-strong
compliance team within ITV across a range of different activities
and it would have to involve them. That decision could not be
taken unilaterally by the producer or the production team.
Q86 Mr Hall: But you would not sanction
the use of illegal means to gain personal information, like we
have seen journalists accessing tax returns, accessing DVLA records,
that would not be countenanced?
Mr Grade: Under normal circumstances,
no. The only caveat I would say is if there was some overriding
public interest, for example, we could prove that XYZ bank was
stealing your money at a high corporate level and the only way
that we could prove this or disprove it was by some activity,
but it would go all the way up to the Board of ITV before permission
would be granted.
Q87 Mr Hall: You would not sanction
breaking the law surely?
Mr Grade: Very, very, very unlikely.
Q88 Mr Hall: You are very unequivocal
about zero tolerance in deceiving—
Mr Grade: Well, there is a public
interest here. The only time I have knowingly broken the law in
broadcasting—
Q89 Mr Hall: Be very careful, you
are being recorded!
Mr Grade: We can edit it!
Q90 Mr Hall: This is going out live.
You are now on the Parliamentary Channel.
Mr Grade: The only time I have
knowingly broken the law in broadcasting was in a programme that
Channel 4 made about Northern Ireland where we knew we would be
asked to disclose our sources, and under the Prevention of Terrorism
Act we had no public interest defence, but the decision of the
Board of Channel 4 at the time was that we would not hand it over.
That is the only time I have ever broken the rules and we were
fined heavily in the courts for so doing.
Q91 Paul Farrelly: Michael, I would
hate for it to be thought that we had given you an easy ride.
I just wanted to return to the Deloitte report to clarify its
status. RDF aside, the BBC report was very narrowly drawn, it
was competitions and quizzes. Is it correct to say that the Deloot's
(sic) process—
Mr Grade: "Deloot's"
is a probably nearer the case given what they are charging!
Q92 Paul Farrelly: Deloitte is simply
premium rate telephone services.
Mr Grade: Yes, because that was
the only information that we had at the time.
Q93 Paul Farrelly: Then the question
is given Survivor, Endemol, RDF, in-house or out of house,
is there not a case now for restoration of public confidence for
a wider call, be it an amnesty with sanctions afterwards, for
anyone to come forward to confess if they have faked it?
Mr Grade: We have that in place.
Q94 Paul Farrelly: Is that happening
now?
Mr Grade: Yes.
Q95 Paul Farrelly: The BBC should
do it or would do it?
Mr Grade: Well, they are doing
it, yes.
Paul Farrelly: They are doing it.
Q96 Chairman: Can I thank you both
very much.
Mr Grade: Could I just correct
the quotation from the speech just for the record. I have the
reading copy here. "I don't know yet what the report will
contain but it could make uncomfortable reading",3 is what
I said. Thank you, Chairman.
3 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."
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