It’s now nearly three months since Susan Watts’ extraordinary report for Newsnight about President Obama’s inaugural speech. After jumping through a multitude of hoops (here, here, and here) as part of the BBC complaints process, I have finally received a letter from the Editorial Complaints Unit with some kind of substantive content. This is what they have to say:
I’m writing to notify you that your complaint about Susan Watts’ report for Newsnight on the environmental challenges faced by President Obama is being entertained by this unit. I would also like to sincerely apologise for the delay in doing so as a result of having mislaid your letter.
To ensure that we have a correct understanding of the basis for your complaint, the BBC’S complaints procedure requires that, at this stage, we set out the main points of complaint as we understand them, and the elements of the Editorial Guidelines that we believe to be most relevant to them. In this instance we understand your complaint to be that the editing of excerpts from President Obama’s inaugural speech in this report distorted their intended meaning. The relevant section of the guidelines is that on Accuracy which says, in a section headed Misleading Audiences:
We should not distort known facts, present invented material as fact or knowingly do anything to mislead our audiences. We may need to label material to avoid doing so.
If you have any comments on this summary of your complaint and the relevant guidelines, please let us have them by 22 April so that we can take them into consideration in the course of our investigation, the outcome of which we’ll aim to let you know by 6 May.
For information, the full Editorial Guidelines can be found at http://www.bbc.co.uk/guidelines/editorialguidelines/
And the BBC’s complaints process is explained at http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/handle.shtml
Yours sincerely
Complaints Manager
Editorial Complaints Unit
There is something positively Dickensian about the use of the word ‘entertain’ in the first paragraph, but as the last paragraph refers to an impending ‘investigation’, we seem to be on roughly the right track at last. What comes in the middle is a little more worrying.
My complaint is here, and I admit that it is rather a long document, but it seemed advisable to make sure that there was no opportunity for misunderstanding. Anyone who has the patience to read it – or in the case of the Editorial Complaints Unit, is paid to do so – will see that the issues extend far beyond the very restricted summary suggested in their letter. Of course I hope that I am wrong to think that this may be an attempt to get my agreement to very limited terms of reference for the inquiry, but after three months – and a lot of correspondence – I’ve learnt that you can’t be too careful when dealing with the BBC. So I wrote back as follows:
Thank you for your letter of 8th April which I assume refers to a complaint that I sent to the Editorial Complaints Unit on 7th March, although you do not say so.
If that is the case, then your summary is, I’m afraid, quite inadequate. The issues, which I laid out in detail, extend beyond the single paragraph form the BBC’s Editorial Guidelines that you have quoted, particularly with regard to impartiality and a breach of the agreement between the BBC and the Secretary of State for Culture Media and the Arts of 2006.
If the Editorial Complaints Unit’s investigation of this matter is restricted to the very limited criteria that you mention, then it will fail to deal adequately with this complaint.
I would also like to draw your attention to Para. 10 of my letter, which is a request for a correction and apology, and Para. 11, which is a request for information.
Should you require any further explanation of the points that I set out in my complaint of 7th March, then please let me know.
It is tempting to think that the ECU’s Complaints Manager may have been so remorseful when she realised that my complaint had been ‘mislaid’ that she dashed off a reply without first reading what I had said carefully. We’ll just have to wait and see what little surprises lie around the corner.
congratulations that your blogging programme is now working on IE :-)
Well, your complaint is being entertained by the BBC, and it is entertaining us !
per
Per
Thanks! The IE glitch was to do with an HTML header that Word includes if I use it to copy text to the blog.
Hi Tony, it’s very good to see that you are making some progress with this, even if it’s taking a little time (understatement!) I also got a reply to my complaint, which I’ll try and post on my blog if I have a moment free this week. It was courteous but it doesn’t add much to the response the BBC have given already. Looking forward to hearing more about this investigation they mentioned to you, in due course.
Alex
I’ll be very interested to see what you got from the BBC. Is there really anything that they can add to their response other than an admission?
“We should not distort known facts, present invented material as fact or knowingly do anything to mislead our audiences. We may need to label material to avoid doing so.”
In light of the above, I would say you have them in a rather perilous position. Nuts stapled to the crossbar as it were.
From NZ, my best wishes and thanks for picking up this (apparent) abuse of their own ethics.
It’s simply disgraceful that the reply has taken so long. The Trust has a staff of 65 people whose job it is to deal with complaints swiftly and thoroughly.
Ayrdale:
I suppose that they may try to claim that the only fault was omitting that ‘label’. If so, it will be a matter of moving on to a higher level.
Robin:
Looking at a recent report on complaints that have gone all the way to the BBC Trust’s Editorial Standards Committee, the average time seems to be about nine months. On the other hand they do get considered pretty carefully eventually.
Tony, here’s the content of the e-mail I received from the Complaints Unit on 15th March. I haven’t written to them again yet but will do so hopefully before this month is out…
Dear Mr Cull
Thank you for your recent e-mail. Please accept our apologies for the delay in replying. We know our correspondents appreciate a quick response and we are sorry you have had to wait on this occasion.
I must inform you that we have nothing further to add to Peter Rippon’s response. However, if you believe a serious and specific breach of the BBC’s published Editorial Guidelines has occurred here and you wish to pursue this complaint further, you are open to contact the BBC’s Editorial Complaints Unit who will independently investigate it. You can write to them at the following address:
Editorial Complaints Unit
BBC
Room 5168
White City
201 Wood Lane
London W12 7TS
Alternatively you can e-mail the Unit at the address: ecu@bbc.co.uk
Please note that any complaints submitted via e-mail must include your postal address as all responses will continue to be issued via letter.
Whether or not you choose to pursue your complaint with the ECU please be assured your concerns have been registered.
Thanks again for taking the time to contact us with your views.
Regards
Paul Hunter
BBC Complaints
Alex:
Good luck! There seems to be no way of shortcutting ‘the procedure’ at the BBC, but I still think that at some level complaints that are well founded eventually get taken seriously. It’s just that you have to be very persistent.
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