Complain to the BBC - How to:

[alwun]

The following comes from the site http://www.mediawatchuk.org/mainsite.htm who state that they are 'Actively campaigning for accountability and public participation in broadcasting'.
This Mediawatch site helpfully inform readers that that 'In their drive to improve accountability, the new BBC Trust has its own dedicated website: www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust
Purpose and role (of the Trust): The purpose of the BBC Trust is to work on behalf of licence fee ayers, ensuring the BBC provides high quality utput and good value for all UK citizens, and it protects the independence of the BBC. To achieve this, the Trustees must keep in close contact with licence fee payers, being aware of and understanding their expectations of the BBC. They do this via research, direct engagement with the public and through the work of the BBC Audience Councils.

Interestingly on the www.bbc.co.uk/trust web site under the 'Complaints and appeals' link it states
"If you have exhausted BBC management's complaints process you can appeal to the BBC Trust." The link to 'Complaints and appeals' is http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/ap...eals/ index.html

At the top of This page it states, 'As representatives of the licence fee payers, we take complaints about the BBC very seriously. This section explains our role in ensuring that the BBC responds to complaints in a fair and timely way.'
"How to complain: If you have a complaint against the BBC, your first recourse is always BBC management. Only when you have exhausted management's own processes for handling complaints can the BBC Trust get involved.

In general, there are three kinds of complaints about the BBC:
Editorial - about the content of BBC output where a breach of the BBC editorial guidelines is alleged.
Non-editorial - about such things as production values, presentation, or scheduling.
Fair trading - about the BBC's trading activity.

"The 'Details of how to make an editorial or non-editorial complaint' takes you back to http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/, and seeing that this avenue has only produced the standard replies documented on the PP website, the next step is as below.
"How to appeal: If you have exhausted BBC management's complaints processes and are unhappy with management's response to your complaint, you can appeal to the BBC Trust:

How to appeal to the Trust over an editorial complaint
How to appeal to the Trust over a fair trading complaint
However, the Trust does not normally consider appeals on non-editorial complaints, for example on matters of presentation, style or scheduling. Such complaints are dealt with by BBC management as operators of the service. In these cases, our role as BBC Trustees is to ensure that BBC management have in place an effective, fair and clear framework to respond to these kinds of complaints. The BBC Trust receives regular complaints-handling reports from BBC management and can review the way complaints have been handled.

Looking at the link 'How to appeal to the Trust over an editorial complaint' which is actually http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/ ap...complaints.html takes us to the following page
"How to appeal to the Trust about a decision on an editorial complaint: Editorial complaints are those that concern the content of BBC output. They are dealt with first of all by BBC management. Only if complainants remain unsatisfied by management's decision can the Trust's Editorial Standards Committee get involved."

Ok, so what are these Editorial Guidelines? "Editorial guidelines: The BBC has published a wide-ranging set of guidelines on editorial matters. Complaints are judged against these Editorial Guidelines."
Link 'View BBC Editorial guidelines' (http://www.bbc.co.uk/guidelines/ editorialguidelines/) documents these guidelines:
The two relevant sets of guidelines here are- Editorial Guidelines in full & - Online Services Guidelines

There are some very interestingly points here under Editorial Guidelines in full which I will leave you to read in your own good time, suffice to say there are sections on Accuracy, Fairness, Impartiality etc

And, there is a whole section on 'War, Terror & Emergencies' with lots of interesting sub sections. This section for example states ''The BBC has a special responsibility to its UK and international audiences when reporting conflict. At such times, large numbers of people across the world access our services for accurate news and information. We must ensure they can be confident that we are telling them the truth.”

Under subsection 'National & international emergencies' it states "In the early stages of covering national and international emergencies, including the reporting of disasters and major accidents, it is particularly important to source information."

Under sub section 'Editorial Integrity & Independence' it states "The BBC's global reputation is based on its editorial integrity and independence. Our audiences need to be confident that our decisions are influenced neither by political or commercial pressures, nor by any personal interests. We must not undermine these values by any actions which could bring the BBC into disrepute."

Under sub section 'Staged Events' there are some interesting observations from the Trust such as "Staged events: Any proposal to attend an event staged by proscribed organisations or groups with a known record for mounting acts of terror must be referred to a senior editorial figure or for Independents to the commissioning editor.

Any proposal to broadcast material recorded at a staged event in the UK or overseas, where threats are made against UK citizens, must be referred to Controller Editorial Policy."
There is a massive amount of information here that would keep a law firm busy analysing for quite a while.

Briefly the second link on the Editiorial Guidlines page referred to earlier which deals with 'Online Services Guidelines' has a list of sections that look similar to the Editorial Guidleines in Full list but wehn you drill down, the sub sections are tailored to address the same type of issues for web content of the BBC. Overall this BBC Trust web site has a massive amount of legal information to 'test' against the current ludicrous and absurd responses from the BBC Editors.

cheers Al