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UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 968 House of COMMONS MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE CULTURE, MEDIA AND SPORT COMMITTEE
PUBLIC CONFIDENCE IN BROADCASTING
Tuesday 24 July 2007 MR MARK BYFORD and MS CAROLINE THOMSON MR MICHAEL GRADE CBE and MR SIMON SHAPS Evidence heard in Public Questions 1 - 96
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
Oral Evidence Taken before the Culture, Media and Sport Committee on Tuesday 24 July 2007 Members present Mr John Whittingdale, in the Chair Janet Anderson Philip Davies Paul Farrelly Mr Mike Hall Alan Keen Rosemary McKenna Adam Price Mr Adrian Sanders Helen Southworth ________________ Witnesses: Mr Mark Byford, Deputy Director-General, Ms Caroline Thomson, Chief Operating Officer, BBC, gave evidence.
Chairman: Good morning everybody. May I thank particularly Mark Byford and Caroline Thomson and indeed Michael Grade for coming in at short notice for this session to examine public confidence in broadcasting. Obviously the reason for this session was the revelation last week of the editing of the Queen trailer and then Mark Thompson's statement revealing a number of deceptions in various programmes. However, we believe it does raise wider questions relating to the whole issue of trust in television. We are splitting the session in two. The first half will be concentrating on the BBC. Adrian Sanders is going to begin. Q1 Mr Sanders: Why are you here? Mr Byford: I think we are here because, firstly, you have asked us to be here in the context that this is a very serious matter that has happened. You yourselves want to discuss trust in broadcasting on the back of these incidents. We ourselves come a few days after letting all our staff know in no uncertain terms that what has come to light is totally unacceptable, gets to the very heart of what the BBC is, which is trust with its audiences, we will not in any way tolerate it, and to come to you and maybe explain to you the actions that we are taking forward with the staff and with our suppliers in the hope that it does not happen again and people are perfectly clear what we stand for. Q2 Mr Sanders: Have you any idea at this stage exactly why these things happened in the first place? Mr Byford: We are obviously looking into these cases in detail. Firstly, on the issue of the Queen, we have announced an independent investigation led by Mr Will Wyatt. That will report in September to the Director-General. I think it is then when we will get behind the facts of the incident involving the promotional clip with the Queen. On the six specific cases that we revealed last week that we were extremely stunned by, frankly --- Q3 Mr Sanders: This is the competition winners? Mr Byford: Yes, the competition winners, the Sport Relief, the Children in Need, the Comic Relief, The Liz Kershaw Show, the White Label, TMi, those which showed that there had been deceit to audiences for whatever reason, some of them because they had technical problems and probably wanted the show to be kept on the air, albeit mistakenly because obviously trust to audiences and honesty comes well before that. We are investigating all those cases so that we get the absolute facts, we know what the issues are involved, we know what the lessons are from them and then we will report back to the Trust in September. We thought it was very important, on the back of the Blue Peter fine, to report back to the Trust last week with those cases, having done a further trawl across the whole of the organisation if you like, to be absolutely honest with our audiences about what was happening as far as we knew, to inform the Trust, to inform the public and to say it is utterly unacceptable. Q4 Mr Sanders: The rules around accuracy and fairness are fairly clear and yet there seems to have been persistent failure here in terms of complying with your own rules. Will how you communicate those rules, whether it be through training staff or general information, be reviewed as part of this ongoing inquiry? Mr Byford: We will. I do not want in any way to lessen the gravity of these particular cases. I think we have been very clear on the seriousness of it. It is in a context where we are doing more than 400,000 hours of output every year across our international, our UK-wide and our local services. It is my view that the vast majority of our staff get it, they absolutely understand that the fundamental value of the BBC's integrity is honesty, but that trawl has revealed that there are cases which get to the very heart of that where people do not get it and that is why we are, firstly, doing a zero tolerance for the future. We will not accept any case and will take it very, very seriously indeed. Secondly, we will do this mandatory training programme: myself, Mark Thompson, Caroline, right through to every researcher, every person across the BBC. You could say a lot of people may think we understand this, we understand the values of the BBC, why us? We think the cases have shown that you cannot take any chances and everybody must be reminded of what the BBC stands for, what trust is about and why these things are utterly unacceptable. That training programme, which will be extensive across 16,000 staff who are involved in programme making across the BBC, involving our suppliers as well, will be drawn up for the autumn and hopefully completed by the new year. Q5 Mr Sanders: What more is the BBC doing to track down further breaches? Mr Byford: It is a good question. After the Blue Peter incident came to light we asked people to look across their programming. It is clear that much of that was focussed around premium phone lines. In the second trawl that we did in the last two weeks we said, "Any case where people have any sense that deceit may have taken place, through fakery, through not being honest with audiences, not necessarily wholly tied to premium phone lines but in any case, declare it now and declare by Monday night at five o'clock". We said at the time that we cannot be 100% certain that we have captured everything. Some investigations are still going on in some areas. That is not because nobody was dilatory in any way. It is because they are being very, very comprehensive about it. It is being headed by every Director in every output area and backed up by an email from Mark Thompson to every member of staff. Those results came in on Monday and were assessed by myself and Caroline. Straight after that were these six cases which we felt were so serious they had to be declared to the Trust. We may well get other cases. Obviously I hope that we do not get other cases but I would not rule it out. If we get cases in future that have happened since this, I can confirm to you in no uncertain terms that they will be judged to be absolutely grave and in a context where we do not tolerate it. Q6 Adam Price: Were you surprised, frustrated or disappointed that it took so long for RDF, the company responsible for the error with the Queen debacle, to come clean with the actual version of events? Mr Byford: As I said to your colleague, we have instigated an independent investigation to be led by Will Wyatt. I think it is best that he gathers all the facts, he gathers all the information, he makes those judgments and he makes his recommendations to us. I think if we are going for an independent investigation and then I break that by giving either my own views or part views it would not be right. Q7 Adam Price: The press were allowed to say for several days that it was the fault or responsibility of a junior member of staff at the company. We now learn that it was a very senior director at the company that was responsible. We were told that this was never meant for public showing, but then we find out that they were themselves using it to market the programme overseas. Is that not a pretty appalling example of deception on their part? Mr Byford: Like you, I read The Guardian on Saturday morning and read the article involving Stephen Lambert; it is public knowledge through The Guardian article. As I said to you though, I think it would be wrong for me to talk in detail about it in the context that we have just announced, that someone outside of the BBC will be looking at those facts, looking at what exactly happened. At the time it came to light we made it absolutely clear that we thought this was a serious erring, that we should apologise for it immediately, that although RDF themselves had accepted that they had been involved by the supplying of the tape in such a form the BBC itself had questions to ask about itself and they will be done as part of the inquiry. Q8 Adam Price: I also read the statement of RDF and David Frank, the Chief Executive, said they had gone public in order to shore up invester confidence. Is that not an appalling indictment, that what was important to them was not the kind of values that we associate with public service broadcasting but shareholder value? Should you not condemn that kind of statement? Mr Byford: I think that is for you to ask Mr Frank, not for me. It is not that I want in any way to be reticent about this at all. It is because in the context that we are now in, an independent investigation led by Mr Wyatt, it would be quite wrong for me to make comments on it. That is the position. The position on the actual use of the clips of the Queen within the BBC One autumn season launch is we absolutely accept that that was a serious error. We apologised immediately. We obviously understand that RDF themselves, through David Frank, wrote to Mark Thompson apologising, which he accepted, but we have also made it perfectly clear there are questions to ask about the BBC's handling of it which will come through this independent investigation which is to report in September and then those findings will be reported to you. The findings will be reported not just to Mark Thompson but straight through to the Trust and will then be made public. Q9 Adam Price: You have suspended any further commissions or ongoing commissions pending the outcome of this inquiry. ITV have done likewise. Channel 4 have not. They have said that they stand by the company. Is this not slightly confusing, that different public service broadcasters seem to have a different standard in terms of the way that they treat independent producers? Should we not have some kind of Kitemark, some quality standard right across the sector? Mr Byford: I do not think it is confusing that each individual broadcaster makes the decision of what it wants to do with RDF and that is what has happened in this case. We ourselves considered the situation and thought the right way forward was to stop any new commissions involving RDF, suspend those while the investigation was going on, not to come to a judgment, but if we were having an independent investigation and the case was so serious, it was right to suspend any new commissions in that context. My understanding is that Michael Grade took the same decision on behalf of ITV. It is for Andy Duncan and the Channel 4 board to decide what they do. Q10 Chairman: You said that as soon as it became clear we said that a mistake had been made. It has been suggested that actually the BBC learned that the trailer was misleading some considerable period before they announced that and had they made the announcement as soon as they found out it might have avoided the tabloids all splashing the story the following morning. Is that correct? Mr Byford: Chairman, I hope that will come out as well in the investigation. It is clear that that is one of the issues. As well as the use of it, it is the BBC's stance on getting the facts out that it was misleading and that will be part of Mr Wyatt's inquiry. There is no doubt that there are issues in that, but I expect that to be covered by him thoroughly and then to report. Q11 Chairman: Can you at least confirm that there was a delay? Mr Byford: There was definitely a delay. If a delay means that there were some hours until the following day of coming to an apology, yes, there was some delay. There were reasons behind that delay, but I would want that to be part of Mr Wyatt's inquiry. Q12 Chairman: Just two days earlier than this incident Mark Thompson gave a speech in which he said, "Consider the way we responded to the recent controversy about Blue Peter, immediate voluntary disclosure, immediate unreserved apology, immediate action to minimise the risk of a recurrence ..." and he held that up as the standard of the BBC and yet two days later it was not immediate. Mr Byford: I think he is right in saying that one of the things that the BBC has learnt and is going to follow is that trust in the BBC is in part about reliability and integrity but it is also about responsiveness to audiences. If we make a mistake or if we need to explain to audiences something that is wrong, we need to do that quickly and we need to do it clearly. I would say, in the context of the last ten days, the BBC, around these six cases that I was informing you about, have been extremely thorough, extremely open and have made it very clear that mistakes have been made and we do not tolerate it. In the context of the Queen, I accept that there are issues there to be investigated, but rather than me coming to a judgement now or giving my view, what I am saying is Mr Wyatt will cover that as part of his brief and we will get the lessons to be learned from it. Q13 Rosemary McKenna: Can we explore what is acceptable and what is not acceptable in editorial policy? You have defended the programme that was made about the Prime Minister the evening before he became Prime Minister, where you have accepted that events were shown out of sequence. Mr Byford: The Newsnight film? Q14 Rosemary McKenna: Yes. What is the difference between putting things out of sequence to make a point, which is really quite dishonest, and the documentary about the Queen? Mr Byford: The first thing to say is we have not wholly defended the Newsnight film. We have said that it did not change the overall substance of the story where clearly with the Queen's clip it did. So to say that they are absolutely the same in our judgment is not true. The use of the clips of the Queen gave a completely wrong impression because of the re-altering of the sequences. With regard to the Newsnight film, the overall substance of the film, which was how accessible is Gordon Brown (Jamie Campbell having done a previous one around David Cameron), in my view we would have been much better having the chronology of the film in the right order because we said at the start of the film that we were following him. That gives the viewers a sense that they are following that month. By reordering it it did not change the overall substance of the film, which was is he more accessible or less accessible because of it and in that sense it was not on the same level as the Queen. There are some times when sequence reordering may not be a deception. I would say in this case best practice would have been that it would have been better to have kept it in the same order. Q15 Rosemary McKenna: Do you not think that that answer will make people worry that in documentaries, Newsnight, films or interviews with people the questions are being taken out of order? Do you not think that is serious? Mr Byford: I think the whole thing is serious. The whole thing that we come before you on today is serious and learning lessons from it and the acceptance of no tolerance, of knowing deceit is why I come before you today. What will come through the training programmes for us is that one has to know where certain broadcasting techniques are not knowingly deceiving the audiences and giving them a completely misleading impression on where some things are. Those six cases, there is no question about it, we have accepted this, involved a knowing deceit around our contract with the audiences and that is not on. As for the Newsnight film, I am saying that it did not change the overall substance of the film and therefore was not in any sense being a direct deceit to the audience, but I still think that the reordering of that sequence was not right. We would have been better off if we had kept it in the right chronological order. In the training modules that we do, rather than just saying let everybody be honest, let everybody be straight, we have got to make it clear that it is the fundamental value of the BBC, the core of what the BBC is about, but then we have got to explore in those modules with our creative community where things are simply unacceptable and not on. I have seen in the papers reverse shots being edited. This happens every day with yourselves. Is that a knowing deceit to the audience? I would say no. Is faking an audience member when they have never been there? That absolutely is. Q16 Mr Hall: You seem to be fighting a rearguard action to put right what clearly looks like a longstanding poor practice. How confident are you that the Blue Peter incident around 9 March was the first time that that had actually happened on that programme? Mr Byford: I cannot be 100% confident, nor can Mark Thompson, nor can the Head of Children's Programming. What we have done is an extremely thorough trawl of the last two and a half years involving all our programme heads. In children's programming and in Blue Peter nothing more has come up involving that particular programme. In that sense we have had two thorough trawls. I would feel confident that the trawls have been done very comprehensively, in a context where people have been left in no doubt that if they know there has been a problem, shout now and let us know, but you cannot be 100% sure. Q17 Mr Hall: Quite clearly you cannot because the trawl that you did after the Blue Peter programme did not show up the six that you found later. Mr Byford: No. I want to just stress - and I hope you would accept the seriousness with which we take those six cases - that I was stunned by it. When this trawl came through and I am looking at the results --- Q18 Mr Hall: You should have been doubly stunned because you had looked through and not found anything and then you went through again and found something else. Mr Byford: I was stunned. It was not a, "Crikey, we've got a bit of a problem here." If you have been in the BBC as long as I have and have worked to uphold the values of the BBC you are stunned by it. I look at that in a context where we are doing 450,000 hours of output a year, this involved more than one million hours and therefore I think we are right to think that there was a minority of cases and a minority of people --- The vast, vast majority of people in the BBC in my view understand never to deceive audiences, never to do these kind of things, but they have happened and the best thing to do if these things happen is to be open, to be clear with you and the audiences that they have happened, to tell everybody that to our best knowledge these are the most serious cases we know about and we are going to declare them to the Trust and then continue with our action plan and our learning. If there are more and they are very serious, in that kind of category, we are going to be open and reveal them to the Trust and then to the public. Q19 Mr Hall: How confident are you? You have done this review and now you say you have these six very serious cases. One of them happened only a week after the Blue Peter thing. Mr Byford: Two days after. Q20 Mr Hall: How do you square that with this sort of vigorous approach that you are taking about with programme making? Ms Thomson: The truth is we were doubly stunned. I think that is the honest answer. We had done a trawl. You can never be sure in the BBC because of the output and hours that you have absolutely got to the bottom of something. One of the things we will be looking at now and the Trust have asked us to look at is why the first trawl did not produce some of the answers that the second trawl did. That is one of the things we will have to look at. I think the simple answer to your question is it is a problem that the first trawl did not produce the right set of answers. Mr Byford: I would go a bit further than that and say that is what we are looking at now. We have come with the facts as we know them to the Trust and to the public, but we are still investigating them in order to get the right facts, the accurate facts and, also, not just what the incidents were and why they happened but why they were not captured by the first trawl. Q21 Mr Hall: When we took our evidence on the game shows and the difficulties that we disclosed about people not being able to get through on the telephone lines and then the problems that came through about the odds that people were trying to gamble on and win in the competition shows ITV stopped them immediately. The BBC did not. Why not? Mr Byford: Firstly, premium phone lines are not widespread in the BBC. Q22 Mr Hall: Competitions are and it was the same thing. You have got competitions where you have a track record now of faking winners. Mr Byford: We have stopped them now, having known about the six cases and having real concern about the running of our competitions. As to your direct question about why did we not stop it after Blue Peter came to light, at that time we had no knowledge of the scale, that there were other cases that involved phoning competitions where there were problems. We had asked for a trawl involving premium line phones and then, as I say, on that first trawl no other serious things were coming to light. We did not want to stop everything at that time involving premium phone lines when they are not widespread in the BBC in phone line competitions. We thought we were in a robust position. Clearly on the back of the second trawl, when we saw that the other cases had come to light, one of the key aspects of the action plan was to stop them immediately, to suspend them until we feel absolutely confident that, even though they are used rarely and most of them are run in a very, very proper manner, in future every one that we run is robust, is meeting the Ofcom code and is meeting our own guidance. Q23 Mr Hall: Caroline, following the Gilligan Report you said before the Hutton Inquiry, on the truth and accuracy of those standards of the BBC, that the BBC fell well short of those. Do you think that is the same sort of restriction about what has happened with these particular incidents? Ms Thomson: I certainly think that aspects of BBC programming have fallen short of the standards that audiences expect of them, standards that the senior executive expects and hopes and indeed standards of the values of the BBC of most of the BBC staff. It is a sad day for us that last week we had to apologise for this. As Mark says, it has surprised and stunned and shocked us. Possibly one of the sets of explanations is that after Hutton we spent a lot of time and effort making sure that our journalism came up to the highest possible standards and Mark has been personally responsible for delivering most of that. One of the reasons why we think the actions we are taking now should have an effect is because we believe we have managed, following on from Hutton, to improve the standards of journalism through training schemes and so on. We know we have a system which will work and we now have to focus on this. Q24 Paul Farrelly: I think, just to give a bit of balance, the BBC should be congratulated for coming clean and Mark Thompson as much as Michael Grade in making some pretty forthright statements on deceit and zero tolerance. You might take the view that on some of the instances identified, putting RDF to one side as that is an editorial issue, these are trivial incidents, disappointing, but incidents that may have been designed to cover up any embarrassment and therefore have caused more embarrassment rather than being systemic, quite apart from The Liz Kershaw Show. We will be interested to see what the BBC has to say about that further. The question is now one of public confidence, it is whether you have picked it all up and indeed whether it is systemic or not. When you made this call across the BBC for people to come forward, what incentives did people have to come forward to the BBC's equivalent of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission? What is the sanction if you have not come forward and things are uncovered that happened in the past? What happens to people if they have not come forward? Mr Byford: There are three things I would like to cover there. Firstly, we do not judge any of these to be trivial. That is why we have been so open and why we have said all of them are grave. Why? It is because they get to the absolute fundamental value of the BBC, which is integrity and being straight with audiences. I have been in the BBC for 28 years and from my first day to today that is what I have understood about the BBC and why I love working for it. As to the second part, why do people want to come forward, it is because they think like me and they do not want this to happen. Quite a lot of people feel really angry about this because it gets to the very heart of what the BBC is. It is not a Truth and Reconciliation Committee. In Mark Thompson's email he did use the words "I need your help" and that is what we needed. We needed people to come forward and to be able to tell us if there were any more. If we had a drip, drip, drip of things where we clearly did not know about them and they were coming out it would be deeply damaging to the brand and the organisation that we work for and love. So in that sense we were wanting people, if they had any suspicion or knowledge that these things had happened, to come forward and let us know. The third is if it happens in future or it happens such that we have asked for the trawl, it should have come out in this one and yet if it comes out again and people knowingly knew about it and had not told us, we will take a very, very, very serious view of that indeed. Q25 Paul Farrelly: So that is a sackable offence? Mr Byford: We will take a very, very serious view. Q26 Paul Farrelly: There are some people who are saying, in my view quite rightly, that when you have got the licence fee there is no need for you, the independent sector and ITV, which is struggling for advertising revenue, to bring in money through premium competitions at all. Why do you go down this route? Mr Byford: The first thing is, the licence fee means that we are owned by the public. That is why this is so serious, because to deceive them, the owners, the people who pay for us, is absolutely not on. The second point is the premium phone lines. You say that the BBC, through the licence fee, should have something that makes it different and for it not to have to do what others do. Where we stand is that we want to make high quality, distinctive programming that people enjoy, that meets our values, meets our editorial standards and these did not, but why do we have them? Some of those programmes, Comic Relief, Children in Need, Sport Relief, in some ways that is the double tragedy of this thing, are programmes that people have loved and they will continue to love them in future. They do great work. They raise money to help children in need. They help to raise money to help in difficult places such as Africa and they are outstanding programmes. When you watch them you are very, very proud of them. The premium phone lines are not there for the BBC to make money, that is not why we have them. We have them to enable audiences to engage with our programming in an enjoyable way. We do not set out to make money from them. If we do make money it goes to the charities involved, such as Children in Need and we think that they have a place, but they only have a place if they are well run and they meet the guidelines that we have. That is why we have suspended them until we can be absolutely confident about that. Q27 Paul Farrelly: Let me give you another example. This is an example where there is no chance of there being no winners because it is so easy to win. Let us take the instance of a very well known sports presenter asking this sort of question with a smirk on his face: "Who was the second highest goal scorer for England behind Bobby Charlton? Was it (A) Barry Lineker (B) Larry Lineker or (C) Gary Lineker?" The issue of dumbing down is also part of this debate. Mr Byford: Are you using that as a hypothetical? Q28 Paul Farrelly: No. There are instances, apart from the charitable giving, where people are encouraged to answer daft questions at a premium rate. Mr Byford: They are, but for it to be a competition it has got to involve a bit of skill. I think that would not. Q29 Paul Farrelly: But that occurs on the BBC. Mr Byford: Not to that level it does not. Ms Thomson: I think there is some public confusion about premium rates. The BBC only uses premium rates for the very big mass phone-ins, for the Comic Relief, the Strictly Come Dancing, those sorts of programmes. For ordinary smaller radio quiz shows we would not be using premium rates as ways of coming in. We use premium rates for the big ones because they are the people who have the technology to cope with the very large number of phone calls. We never seek to make money out of them, we seek to cover the costs and where we do make more money than the costs - because the phone companies set the tariffs, not us - we always give that to charity. Obviously one of the things people like with the programmes is they like being able to interact. You have seen me sitting in front of you before saying broadcasting is turning into a dialogue; we need to be able to interact in a digital world with our audiences. The challenge for us, as Michael Grade said the other day, is to make sure that in the digital world we can operate with the same values and standards as we have done in the analogue world. What this shows, going back to Adrian Sanders' first point, is that that is a very, very big challenge and perhaps a bigger one, we should admit, than we had realised. Q30 Chairman: Of the six examples you have cited or identified, I think Paul Farrelly is correct that many people may feel that The Liz Kershaw Show, where there was serial deliberate deception, represents one of the worst examples. Why is The Liz Kershaw Show still broadcasting? Mr Byford: The investigation to get the full facts on that case is still taking place. We will get those facts and report them as thoroughly as we can for September to the Trust and take what appropriate action we have to take. The judgment made at the moment is that Liz Kershaw continues broadcasting on BBC6 Music but our investigation continues. Q31 Chairman: But a lot of other members of your staff have been suspended. Surely there must have been a pretty strong case for suspending her given that this appears to have been one of the most serious breaches. Mr Byford: What we have asked for is the ability for our senior people to be able to investigate the facts behind these cases, to understand what exactly happened, what the issues are involved and what actions need to take place and they are happening now. It is true that in some cases some people have been asked to stand back from their jobs while those investigations take place and some people have not. That judgment is being made in order for the investigations to be carried out in as thorough a manner as possible and then when we have got the facts we will make our judgments. Ms Thomson: It is worth adding to that that the producer who was responsible for the period in which these problems occurred is no longer producing the programme. When the new producer arrived in January they saw the practice and immediately stopped it. The BBC traditions of editorial responsibility are through the production line rather than through the presenter's line. Q32 Chairman: But Liz Kershaw must have known that the people going on air to win her competitions were members of the production team. Mr Byford: Clearly we want to ask those questions and be absolutely clear, knowing the full facts around the case. What we do know is that in some pre-recorded programmes of The Liz Kershaw Show on BBC6 Music there was deceit to the audiences. We have come absolutely clean on that, Chairman. What we want to do now is to have a short period of time to do a very, very thorough investigation around all six cases so we know what the facts are, we know what the issues are and then we can take the appropriate action. Q33 Chairman: If it is clear that there was deceit, which you have just said there was, surely that in itself should be sufficient for you to suspend a programme until the investigation has been completed. Mr Byford: The appropriate thing is to be able to do a very thorough investigation and then take the action. Q34 Philip Davies: Following on from that and the action plan that you announced, as you have just confirmed, you asked certain people to stand back from their duties. Some of the newspaper reports suggest that some of these people are at a relatively junior level. Should senior managers not be taking some responsibility for what happened and considering their positions? Mr Byford: I think the position at the moment is that three people who are in senior positions that were involved in those productions have been asked to stand back while these investigations are taking place. So the people that have are senior rather than junior and were involved in the productions, because these investigations are taking place involving individuals, again it is in a similar context to the Wyatt investigation on the Queen; a context where we are being very open and where we are being very clear that these things were unacceptable. I would say as well, for the integrity of the process that is involved, it is not right that I give any further details about those processes because they are live, they are under way now and so it does not harm the integrity of that process it is best that I do not say any more in detail, but I can confirm to you that three people have been asked to stand back. Q35 Philip Davies: This is a typical government tactic of hiding behind an inquiry so you cannot comment any further. We see this all the time. What will it take to come out of these inquiries for you or Mark Thompson to think, "This is so damaging to the BBC that I will now resign my position or consider my position"? What will it take out of these inquiries to get to that stage? Mr Byford: The first thing that both of us have said - and it is two people that have worked for the BBC for many, many years - is that what has happened is utterly unacceptable and cannot happen again. We have an absolute zero tolerance about this happening in future and if it did then we would literally not tolerate it at all and take very grave action about it. With the cases that have happened what we are trying to do is find the facts, understand what the action was that was involved and understand why they did not come up as part of that first trawl that you were asking about earlier. Were people knowingly not coming forward with them or did they actually think that the request was around premium phone lines or whatever? We need to let that investigation take place and then be able to judge what is the right course of action, but this is in a context where both of us, the whole executive board, I can certainly confirm for myself and for him, recognise and absolutely believe this is a very serious situation, it cannot happen again and we will act properly about the cases that have happened. We must let the due process happen and keep the integrity of that process by not talking about it in public now. Q36 Philip Davies: I will try one more time. What would it take to come out of that inquiry for you to decide that your position or Mark Thompson's position was no longer tenable? Mr Byford: I think our positions have been made perfectly clear by the Trust when they met last week. They themselves judged, rightly, that this is very serious, that we have to act and make it perfectly clear to every member of staff who works for the BBC, both in-house and with our independent suppliers, that we will not tolerate it and that we have a rigorous, comprehensive and strong training programme that makes the culture of the BBC realise that what has happened in the past, however much it has been a minority, cannot happen in the future. I think that is on our shoulders, frankly. Rather than the cases themselves, it is how we respond in an effective manner now which is the test for Mark Thompson, myself and the Executive Board and we are taking that very seriously indeed. Q37 Philip Davies: You mentioned there that over 16,000 staff are now going to attend an editorial training programme focusing on the issue of honesty. Is forming a training programme to tell your staff not to lie, not to mislead and not to cheat viewers necessary and a good use of licence fee payers' money? Mr Byford: I think if I came before the Committee today and said we did not think any training was needed and everybody got it you would think we were utterly complacent about it. Some people may go on that training programme and it will be confirming to them what they absolutely believe, but they will be able to help others in explaining why it is so important. I think the gravity of the situation has been such that every member of staff, including us, should be on those training programmes. There will be interactive modules on the desktop as well as seminars. They will not just be about remembering to be honest, although of course that is absolutely fundamental to the BBC. Ms McKenna asked about what things are utterly unacceptable in the normal practice of broadcasting. They will explain those things to people so that people can be left in no doubt. In my view, although these are isolated cases, they probably involve a very, very small minority of staff, the gravity of the situation and the need to tell everybody of the absolute unacceptability of what has happened mean that the training programme should be mandatory and universal. Q38 Philip Davies: I understand that you are thrashing around to be seen to be doing something, but not lying, not misleading and not cheating viewers strikes me as being rather self-evident without having to send somebody on a training programme. Perhaps you might need to look at your processes for recruiting people into the BBC if you have to train them on fundamentals such as lying, cheating and misleading people. Ms Thomson: Of course being honest should be an absolute fundamental of everyone's life. I think what a lot of the instances we have found have shown however is that people are putting forward the idea that the show must go on, that the value of finishing the show and completing the show and in their minds, in some cases, serving the audience by doing this takes primacy of place over the need to be honest with the audience. What we need to make sure and make absolutely clear to them is that they no longer think that, that that is not an acceptable way to be running the programmes. As Mark Thompson said to staff last week, if there is a choice between the programme going off the air and lying to the audience then you let the programme go off the air. What I think we have discovered is that the culture - and I think it is not just in the BBC, it is across broadcasting - has tilted the wrong way in that balance and what we have to do is get it right the right way. Mr Byford: You asked about recruitment and I think that is fair. As well as these training programmes that we will carry out now in the next six months we will absolutely review the recruitment programmes. When people join the BBC they do get a session about our editorial policy values and our guidance, but we are going to beef that up and we are going to beef it up in the context of this so that people who join are left in no doubt whatsoever what the BBC stands for and what matters in the BBC. What matters in the BBC is being honest with audiences and for them to be left in some doubt such that if it then happened they cannot say they did not know. Q39 Philip Davies: Perhaps you would be willing to send us a copy of your training materials so that we can assess if we think that your training is appropriate to deal with the issues that have come out of this. Would you be willing to send us a copy of the training materials that you are going to be using for your staff? Mr Byford: I think we can reflect and consider that. What we can most certainly do is give you what the flavour of the training programme is and what it is trying to get at so that you are familiar with what we are doing. I cannot see a problem with that. Ms Thomson: One of the things that we would like to be doing as we embark on this process is working, as Mark said last week, across the industry because obviously one of the issues we have is how we make sure that, as we deal with a world where we have much more independent production, the values we have for our own staff also apply to independent producers. That we will only do if we get broad support from the rest of the industry. One of the things we are thinking about is how we work with the rest of the industry in developing training and recruitment and work on values and broadcasting. I have spent 11 years of my life in Channel 4. The values I have in the BBC are not different from the values I had when I worked at Channel 4, they are public service broadcasting values. Q40 Adam Price: Both of you said that you were doubly stunned and other senior executives have said that they were shocked by these stories. Is not your ignorance of what some people have referred to as the tip of the iceberg, Richard Ayre called systemic, many people have said it is part of the modern mainstream programme making practice in the BBC and elsewhere, a worrying sign that senior management at the BBC, for whatever reason, have become dangerously out of touch with the reality on the ground? Mr Byford: I do not believe we are. I absolutely do not believe we are. You can ask that question and we can ask it of ourselves, but I do not believe it is the case. The vast, vast majority of our output in my view upholds the BBC standards, upholds the values. The vast, vast majority of people who work for the BBC, the people inside who are staff members, uphold those values. The people who supply programmes to us know what the brand stands for. Cases have come to light, a minority of cases but they are serious and it is how we respond to those that is the key. I hope that what we have done is explain not just to yourselves today but to the public and to our own staff that this is unacceptable. It is not just one of those things that happen and keep the programme on the air; it is really serious because it gets to the heart of what the BBC is about and we are not going to tolerate it. Secondly, how we respond is in giving a rigorous training programme which is relevant, which is meaningful to all staff and leaves them in no doubt what the executive board and the BBC stand for. In that sense I do not think what we are doing is living in ignorance. We are living knowing that some cases have happened, we have wanted to come very, very clean and tough about what we are going to do about it and the proof will be that it does not happen in future. You cannot guarantee 100% that there are not going to be further cases. What you can guarantee is that you are going to give every bit of effort you can to make everybody who works for the BBC clear that this is not right. Q41 Adam Price: Is not the reality that there are two BBCs, there are senior executives like yourselves who seem to be wearing Reithian rose-tinted glasses of 20 years ago and then there is the real BBC with programme makers and researchers under huge pressures to drive up ratings and working on short-term contracts and so it is inevitable that these kind of things are going to happen? Mr Byford: I do not think there are two BBCs in that sense. I have walked the corridors in the last seven days. I was in the newsroom last night. I have been with programme makers over the last five or six days. I bump into them in the canteen. I bump into them in the lift. I see them in the corridors. It is not that the executive are horrified about this and stunned and ordinary members of staff, some of whom, as you suggest, would do the same thing, absolutely not. Everywhere that you touch across the BBC people themselves are upset, some are angry, they have shared that with me, some are baffled and some are hurt and many of them are all four. Why? It is because we care. We absolutely understand what the BBC stands for. You do have the privilege of working for the BBC that it is owned by you, that it is raised through a licence fee, that it does uphold standards that have been there for 80 years and you feel that you are part of it. When people do these kinds of things you feel that it has not only damaged the brand but it has damaged what you have worked for. I do not think that is an executive board or a Deputy Director-General out of touch. It is a Deputy Director-General that understands the seriousness and wants to act in the most effective manner to ensure it does not happen again. Q42 Rosemary McKenna: Can we move on now to the independent sector? Over the last week many have tried to blame the increasing use of independent producers for the mistakes and implied that "indies" do not share public service broadcasting values of accuracy and fairness. Do you agree with that? Mr Byford: I do not. I think for the BBC today to say that the problems are with the independent sector and everything in-house is fine and it is really with them - and Mr Price's suggestion is quite right - would be utterly inaccurate and wrong. Over the last week everybody has read the papers about why all this has happened. Is it around casualisation? Is it around independent supplies? Is it around young people not trained as effectively as before? I think, as I have said before, that what has happened here is that a minority of people have shown that they do not get it and we need to make sure that in future they do. I think it is important our training programmes are available to all of the independent sector, to our suppliers as well as in-house. I think there are independent programme makers today who feel as privileged as I do to be making programmes for the BBC and absolutely understand what the BBC is about and uphold those standards. What it has shown us is that it is not just about the independent sector, it is about broadcasting in general and that what is at issue here now is trust with audiences and does it matter. What I am saying on behalf of the BBC as well as someone in broadcasting is it matters fundamentally. The absolute kernel of what we are about is that integrity and honesty with our audiences is number one. Everyone who works for programmes for the BBC, whether in-house or independents, will have to be reminded of that and ensure that they uphold that in future. Q43 Rosemary McKenna: But you have been so much tougher on the independent sector. Without justifying in any way what RDF did with the Queen programme, by suspending any work with them what you have actually done is effectively shut down all independent production in Scotland, and that is a very, very serious matter. It has got political implications as well because people are saying why is broadcasting remitted to Westminster and not devolved to the devolved administrations because it is very, very serious. Mr Byford: Ms McKenna, I can assure you today that the actions that we have taken in this action plan are not to hit the whole independent sector. We have not stopped new commissions from the independent sector across the board, we have done it with one and in the context of one case involving the Queen promotion clips because an independent investigation is taking place and until that reports we do not think that it is the right action to be commissioning new programmes when the findings have not yet come out. I can absolutely assure you of this, in the discussions between Mark Thompson and myself and others about the action plan, it never came in any context about geographical damage or geographical siting of independents. There was one independent company which had supplied us which is now part of an independent investigation which we have said to the Chairman and to the Committee today was a very, very serious matter indeed, and we will suspend new commissions until that report has reported, Mr Wyatt's report has come through, and we know what the right action is for the future. Q44 Rosemary McKenna: It has come on top of last year's Annual Report which demonstrated that last year there was a substantial drop in the BBC's investment in BBC Scotland. Mr Byford: We have a clear commitment to reflect the whole of the nations and regions of the United Kingdom and to increase network production from outside of London. I think we are on a goal, as you know, of 17% of all network production, and we have declared that and will meet it. There is no sense from either of these cases today or the issue of trust that this in any way affects our commitment to a strong, healthy supply of programmes from across the United Kingdom. Q45 Alan Keen: Mark, I share your values completely and I knew this is what you would say to us today and it has reassured me as well. However, can you help me with a problem we get when we are talking about absolute truth. It is difficult because I can sit with three or four others watching a programme, for instance a gang of people coming to refurbish somebody's house and then the owner of the house is going to come back and have a lovely surprise at the end. In order to make that programme interesting, drama is introduced into it, a need for pace and this sort of thing. I cannot stand that. I get called a misery guts because I say, "That's false, that's not being done properly." I do not mind quite so much when the person comes home and is wonderfully surprised by it. However, it is a mixture of reality and drama, so where do you draw the line there? With three or four people watching it we have all got slightly different feelings when we watch those programmes. I cannot stand them personally because I know that it is not all actually true and timed properly and it is a filmed sequences of the people doing the work making clever comments, and I should think they must have to film 67 shots in order to put three clever phrases in there and it puts me off completely, but other people enjoy it. So how do you see that those can be handled? Mr Byford: Your first premise is to tell the truth, your first premise is to be straight with audiences, and your first premise is to be honest, so if you are in doubt that you are being deceitful, lying, conning the audience such that they are getting a completely misrepresented picture; do not do it. It is pretty clear and pretty simple. If I am doing an interview with you today on College Green just outside here and I interview you about this Committee hearing (it would not be me obviously but if this took place) and the questions that I had asked you accurately were then recorded afterwards in order to help in the editing process, I do not think that is a deceit of the audience, I really do not. I think it is a production technique, well-known and well-understood, to help with the flow of the interview and it is not being deceitful. In these cases this was faking, it was lying, it was not telling the truth and in the training programmes that we do we will make it perfectly clear what is understandable in broadcasting techniques and what is not, but the basic premise should be: be straight and honest with the audiences. Q46 Alan Keen: I agree with all you have said this morning and I would agree with what you have just said then, but you are not really responding to these programmes which are part drama and part fix. Mr Byford: It depends on the individual case, I think, and looking at what you are trying to do. If you are not in any way misleading the audience to the premise of what you are saying then it may be acceptable, but the key is if you know that you are misleading them in such a manner that it is deceit. Ms Thomson: Could I just add to that because I think the issue you raise is really important. We are all familiar with the Blue Peter scenario of "here's one I made earlier" or the cookery programmes where suddenly the soufflé comes out of the oven and it is always perfect, and obviously those sorts of things are generally acceptable to the audience. I think what we have a particular duty to do at the BBC and we are actually charged to do anew in the new Charter is to help media literacy and to help in explaining some of those devices to people. The example I would cite is the way that we have done the recent David Attenborough programmes where in natural history programmes there are often issues about how you make sure the narrative hangs together, so you have got the crucial picture of the bees in the hive or something and the picture has gone slightly wrong and you have to go back and shoot it the next day. What we did with the Attenborough programmes was at the end of the programmes we had a ten-minute sequence showing how they had made the programmes and those were really interesting for audiences. Perhaps in some ways, traditionally, we would have thought this was dispelling the myth and people would not appreciate them, but actually the evidence is that people appreciate them much more. I think that is the sort of thing we have to get over. One of the lessons of this is that there are acceptable devices that we all have to use, but what we need to do is to make sure that people understand them, we need to explain them, we need to have the confidence to be upfront with them, and that is one of the things we need to work on in the next year. Mr Byford: These will come through the training programme but also another thing that we have been talking about with Mark is whether on the website through media literacy we give some of these examples so the audiences know what the techniques are in broadcasting but in a context of truthfulness and honesty. Chairman: I am anxious that we move on to our next session but we have got two more questions so if I could appeal for relatively brief answers. Helen Southworth? Q47 Helen Southworth: Could I ask you if we could actually look at some of the words that you have been using and make sure we have got the messages right. You have talked about "zero tolerance", about "absolutely unacceptable", "should never have happened", make everybody clear this is not right" on the one hand, but you have also said "not completely misleading" and "not a direct deceit". I find those very mixed messages, particularly when they refer to things which are perhaps a very strong implication for an audience of something. Do you think that there is actually a difference perhaps in the discretion that would be allowed between light entertainment and between news and documentaries in terms of whether something was a "direct deceit" or "completely misleading" or "zero tolerance" and "absolutely unacceptable"? Mr Byford: I am sorry if you are a little bit confused or I may have misled you, I want to be absolutely clear: the fundamental value of the organisation is honesty and truthfulness with audiences. In any genre, if in doubt do not do it. Secondly - and I will try and be very clear on my words - if we are deceiving the audience and telling lies and not upholding those values, we should not be doing it. To the examples that Caroline was engaging with Mr Keen, there are clearly things that do not do that. However, in my view the BBC in all its output should be understandably straight with its audiences and telling the truth. Q48 Helen Southworth: Can I ask about trailing the hot story, and I am sure it is something that you are familiar with, so for example running a good story about the Queen so that you can get the headlines so that you can get more viewers for your programme, or something which the BBC seems to be doing more and more of which is reporting something as news when in fact it is a trailer for a BBC programme that is going to be on later in the day or in the week. What is that? Mr Byford: Two things on that. Firstly, in the action plan we are saying that promotion and publicity material should be treated like a programme and that it needs to be cleared in terms of its robustness and its accuracy by the people who are responsible for it. People will always want to promote their programmes, and rightly so, not just to the press but to audiences to let them know they are happening, particularly the big ones that we are proud of, but the trailing of them and the promotion and publicity material should absolutely be in keeping and faithful to what the programme is saying and, if it is not, that is wrong. Is it our responsibility to ensure that it is? Yes, we are the publishers. Secondly, on the promotion of stories and are we over-blowing them on the news rather than them being news stories? I do not think that is the case. Sometimes people ask that in terms of trailers we have done recently on Panorama that have then been cross-referenced in news programmes. Are we over-giving promotion on certain stories that have come from the BBC in news programmes? Those news editors judge what the agenda of the day is and they judge it in the context of all the stories that are happening. In my view, what we have to do is know that there are concerns that we may be over-promoting certain stories where then people think it is skewing the agenda, people feel that is wrong, and we should just hold it in check. Q49 Helen Southworth: So are you in fact saying that the person who either is the producer or the person who is the announcer or the programme presenter is the person responsible for that? Mr Byford: No, on the first issue of the publicity and promotion material it is the BBC's responsibility and the people that are using that promotional material, whoever they are, where it is a controller or a director they are responsible. In news terms on the second part of your question when you were asking about items and stories that the BBC have got in other outlets, is it then shaping the agenda and are we over-promoting them? The decision for what we run is the editor of that programme. That is how news works at the BBC. The editors edit those programmes and decide what the key stories are that they should be putting on the agenda and in my view if we have a very, very good story in another outlet that is making news, that is being talked about then we should definitely have that considered as part of our news agenda. What it should not do is over-hype or over-influence what that agenda is. Q50 Helen Southworth: And who do you think in the BBC is responsible for setting the culture within which those decisions can be made? Mr Byford: The Executive Board. Q51 Janet Anderson: The BBC is of course in a very privileged position because it has a guaranteed income from the licence fee, and I am sure you would agree that the general public accept the protection that you have from competitive pressures so you can set an example to other broadcasters and continue to be regarded as the gold standard of accuracy and fairness. The licence fee is of course a regressive poll tax paid by every household apart from those with people over 75, and in fact people can be sent to prison for not paying their licence fee. Do you think that all of this has weakened the case for the licence fee? Mr Byford: I hope not and I do not think it has. I do think that if the BBC continued to not place in any way honesty and straightness with the audience and in any way showed complacency in that, it damages the BBC as well as the licence fee. We come before you today to say that we absolutely accept it is a privilege to have a licence fee and to have funding from the whole of the public of the United Kingdom that enables the BBC to make high-quality programmes, programmes that they enjoy, that they learn from, that they are informed about and that they think the BBC helps them lead their lives in a better way. That is what the BBC and public service broadcasting is about. However, it is in a context where the BBC to uphold its values has to be trusted by the audience and trusted for telling the truth and trusted for having integrity and trusted for having ambition to have high standards. This has let us down. The key now is to act on it to make it perfectly clear not just to you but to our staff that with that privilege come certain absolute, clear contracts with the audience and one is to be straight with them. Q52 Janet Anderson: But do you accept that it is going to be a big job to restore that public trust? Mr Byford: I think it is going to be a job for us to ensure that everybody that works for the BBC is absolutely clear about what has happened and why it is unacceptable, and that job is already underway. It was underway from the very moment that Mark Thompson made his announcement to staff. We take it very, very seriously indeed. We will continue to track trust in the BBC. I know that the context is that we are the must trusted broadcaster in Britain, that the vast majority of the public hold high marks for the BBC in terms of trust, and what we cannot have is incidents like this in any way damaging it. Chairman: Very quickly Paul Farrelly. Q53 Paul Farrelly: Mr Byford, I wonder if you could just resolve one question from your evidence for me with a yes or no answer, just one word. You have suspended RDF commissioning pending the conclusion of the investigation and yet you have not suspended The Liz Kershaw Show pending the conclusion of the investigation into who knew what and when. Is that inconsistent: yes are no? Mr Byford: Er, no. Mr Price: There is your answer! Q54 Chairman: I think we will allow you a very short elaboration of why you think that. Mr Byford: It is not inconsistent because what we have said is no new supply from RDF while the independent investigation by Mr Wyatt is taking place. What we are doing with The Liz Kershaw Show, as we are with all the other cases, is continuing to do further investigations on it, to ask people to stand back where appropriate, as Caroline Thomson has said, who were in senior production roles and may have knowingly known that there was a deceit taking place, and then to take the appropriate actions when we have got all the facts. That is why I do not think that they are inconsistent. Chairman: Can I thank you both very much for your time.
Witnesses: Mr Michael Grade CBE, Executive Chairman, and Mr Simon Shaps, Director of Television, ITV, gave evidence.
Chairman: We now turn to Michael Grade, who is appearing as Executive Chairman of ITV, alongside Simon Shaps, the Director of Television at ITV, although we may stray a little beyond ITV given your wide experience throughout the broadcasting industry and indeed some remarks which you made in your recent speech to the Royal Television Society. Can I invite Paul Farrelly to start. Q55 Paul Farrelly: Michael, as I have said before, can I congratulate you on your Television Society speech about the zero tolerance of deceit; it hit the issues right on the button. One of the serious concerns of this Committee when we looked at quiz TV was that as long as the money was rolling in, and the profits (which were important) kept on flowing, the system contained no incentives for people to police these sorts of issues. You took the action to suspend ITV Play and like programmes while Deloitte's conducted a review but the suspension did not last very long. It seems as if they were all arrested on suspicion and Deloitte's has been an early release scheme really. The question is have they been released or are programmes like Play to Win still on bail? Mr Grade: As soon as the issue came to light we had a zero tolerance position quite early on which was to take the entire product off the shelf, if you like. There were three aspects to the Deloitte's review: one was to look at each programme that was on air at the time and those that wanted to get back to meet viewer demand for participation in the programme had to satisfy Deloitte's that their systems were robust, that they understood the compliance procedures and the rules and so on, and they could not get back on air with any aspect of premium phone lines until they had satisfied Deloitte's that they were capable of monitoring and their systems were robust and they understood their compliance responsibilities. That was the first aspect. The second aspect was to make sure that our compliance procedures themselves were fit for purpose, and that meant going beyond the ICSTIS rules, the Ofcom rules and so on, and having our own rules, which they have done. We charged them at the same time to look at all our output going back over the last two years. That report hopefully is reaching its final stages and will be delivered to me hopefully in the next month or so. Q56 Paul Farrelly: Clearly ITV Play is a significant earner for ITV, and for Deloitte's to clear the programme so quickly it must have worked very fast and very efficiently, which is not my experience of accountants generally when they conduct these reviews. When we were looking at quiz TV, we were quite surprised by the complacency from Channel 4 to the regulators and also that of the controllers of ITV Play over the potential for systemic abuse. In particular, one of the things that struck me was that ITV Play put in a call limit to people, 150, a good thing, and yet it was still willing to take the money, blaming technology issues, when people had breached the call limit, and in that sense it was complacent in taking money from people. Does that still happen? Mr Grade: No. Q57 Paul Farrelly: Categorically? Mr Grade: I think there was considerable pressure on the profitability of ITV prior to my arrival which put too much emphasis on the premium phone line opportunity and less emphasis on the compliance and the integrity of the offering to the consumer. I do not think there was really a full understanding of how premium phone lines changed the relationship between the viewer and the broadcaster to one of a fiscal transaction and the responsibilities that carried. I think there was considerable pressure. That pressure has been relieved. Our systems on those phone lines that are now active are extremely robust. We await the Deloitte's review to see if there is anything more that we need to do, but I am confident that through this we will emerge with a system that is fair and that does not in any way damage the integrity of the ITV brand. Q58 Paul Farrelly: As part of the Deloitte's review have you done what the BBC has done and asked people to come forward with a mea culpa? Mr Grade: From day one. And we have a whistle-blowing policy in ITV which we have messaged consistently to our staff that they can use, to let us know if they are being asked to do things that they do not think are right or if things are going on in their area which are not right, and so on. That policy has been in place since 2006 but it has been very, very useful, and I believe Deloitte's are quite pleased particularly with the response that they have had from ITV Productions which is our in-house production capability. Q59 Paul Farrelly: Can you explain to the Committee where the Deloitte's process goes from here? What stage is it at and when will they produce a draft report? Mr Grade: The next thing hopefully is that a final draft report will be made available to the Executive Board of ITV. We will consider it, we will consider our response, what action we need to take, and it will then go to the full Board of ITV plc, and the Board will ask for amendments or will approve the action and so on, and then the findings and the action that we are going to take will be made public as quickly after that as possible. 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". 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 lightening rod at the moment that is attracting the flak (can a lightening 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 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! 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." Lou used to have great difficulty, "Well, it sort of is and it isn't", he had great difficult 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's 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 off 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's 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's 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", is what I said. Thank you, Chairman. |