ITV

Tag: GPCC

  • BBC Governors outline proposed changes to complaints process

    BBC Governors outline proposed changes to complaints process

    MUMBAI: UK pubcaster the BBC’s Governors have outlined proposed changes to their complaints appeals process and are inviting licence fee payers to comment on them during a four week consultation. This is the first time the procedures for handling appeals have been clearly set out and published for the public.

    The Governors are responsible for ensuring all editorial and programme complaints are properly handled by the BBC and through their Programme Complaints Committee (GPCC) they consider appeals from people who are not satisfied with management’s response to their complaint.

    They are the final authority over the BBC on matters of impartiality and accuracy. The changes outlined are designed to strengthen the transparency and objectivity of the system used by the GPCC.

    They include proposals for:

    -sharing material relied upon by the GPCC with all parties for comment before a decision is reached;

    -giving the GPCC chairman discretion to call hearings for first-party complaints;

    -and the addition of a new finding of “already resolved”, to be used in circumstances where an error has occurred and the GPCC is satisfied that management has already dealt with the matter appropriately.

    GPCC chairman Richard Tait said, “The BBC’s Board of Governors believes the public should be at the heart of everything that the organisation does. Licence fee payers have a right to expect the highest editorial standards from the BBC, and the right to challenge if they are unhappy with the standards of any output.”

    The Governors will take account of the responses to the consultation before finalising the procedures. The board will publish a summary of the responses on its website and will then implement the procedures for the GPCC in the summer.

  • BBC Governors publish latest complaints findings

    MUMBAI: The BBC board of governors have published the findings for their Programme Complaints Committee for the period 1 January to 31 March 2005 and for 1 April to 30 June 2005.

    The Governors’ Programme Complaints Committee (GPCC) is responsible for monitoring the effectiveness of complaints handling by the BBC, including hearing appeals from complainants who are not happy with the responses they have received from BBC management. The GPCC came to findings on 22 appeals in quarter one: 20 related to matters of impartiality and accuracy and two related to matters of taste and decency. After careful consideration, the Committee upheld two appeals in full or in part.

    One complaint that was upheld concerned the show Campbeltown on BBC Two. The complainant was one of nine people to complain to the Programme Complaints Unit about t Campbeltown. The programme was billed as “an intimate portrait of small-town life which follows the lives of four teenagers growing up in Campbeltown, an isolated town on the west coast of Scotland. It has little to offer its young; its old industries are now barely viable, there’s no swimming pool and the cinema is shut on a Friday night. These teenagers are faced with trying to find work locally or leaving for a new life elsewhere.”

    The complainant maintained that the programme was “deliberately dishonest and misleading”, and that the programme maker had a “predetermined agenda” to show that “living in a small town is a dead end experience and chose sequences which demonstrated that and omitted sequences which contradicted that viewpoint”. The complainant then cited examples of the ways in which the programme had depicted negative elements of the lives of the four teenagers, and omitted positive references.

  • BBC’s GPCC report criticises ‘Nap Attack’

    MUMBAI: The BBC Governors have published the latest findings of their Programme Complaints Committee – for the period 1 October to 31 December 2004.

    The Governors’ Programme Complaints Committee (GPCC) is responsible for monitoring the effectiveness of complaints handling by the BBC, including hearing appeals from complainants who are not happy with the responses they have received from BBC management.

    The GPCC, considered 14 appeals in the above mentioned quarter. 13 were related to matters of fairness and accuracy and one concerned matters of taste and decency. After careful consideration the GPCC upheld in part one appeal.

    The complaint that was partially upheld related to the special 2002 Greatest TV Moments. A clip from the show Nap Attack was shown. It generated uproarious laughter from the studio audience. The complain was that the lampooning nature of Nap Attack had encouraged the general public to ridicule and humiliate vulnerable people suffering from a serious medical condition.

    The Committee decided that it had been inappropriate to show the clip in question out of context. In the original programme, the audience had been attuned to the situation faced by the principal contributors. They had been made aware of how traumatic and debilitating narcolepsy could be for sufferers.

    The audience of 2002 Greatest TV Moments knew nothing about the condition or the effect it had on sufferers’ lives. Because the clip had been presented out of its original context, the audience had reacted to it with laughter.