Research issues facing producers of factual programming and how they

can be solved

By William Sargent

Glossary• Accuracy

– Web definitions: ‘The quality or state of being correct or precise.’• Balance

– To keep the argument/documentary even and fair on both sides.• Impartiality

– Lack of comparison, correspondence, or suitableness; incongruity.– Indivisibility into equal parts; oddness.– Inequality; disparity; disproportion; difference of degree, rank, excellence, number, etc.

• Objectivity– Web definitions: ‘judgment based on observable phenomena and uninfluenced by emotions or personal prejudices.’

• Subjectivity– Web definitions: ‘Judgment based on individual personal impressions and feelings and opinions rather than external facts.’

• Opinion– Web definitions: ‘A view or judgment formed about something, not necessarily based on fact or knowledge.’

• Bias– Web definitions: ‘Show prejudice for or against (someone or something) unfairly: "the tests were biased against women"; "a biased view of the

world".’ • Representation

– Web definitions: • The action of speaking or acting on behalf of someone or the state of being so represented.• The description or portrayal of someone or something in a particular way or as being of a certain nature.

• Access– Web definitions: Obtain, examine, or retrieve (data or a file).

• Privacy– Web definitions: The state or condition of being free from being observed or disturbed by other people.– The state of being free from public attention.

Difficulty Getting Interviews• People we film may be nervous or shy in front of the camera they may also feel

nervous about what they have to discuss.• We could possibly resolve this by offering to pixelate their face if they do not

want to be recognised by people who view the footage later on.• The public may avoid us if we try to ask them for an interview because they

may find us intimidating.• Dress up in casual clothes, so we don’t look intimidating and ask the person

politely and maturely so as not to intimidate them.

• There are some great examples in the documentary called “Aileen, life and death of a serial killer” by Nick Broomfield. Nick has to be very polite, mature and careful when interviewing Aileen because she is a crazy mass murderer and although she is reasonably calm throughout her interviews she loses her temper big time in the last interview before she is about to be executed because Nick asked her the wrong question.

Biased Opinion On Subject Matter• Our difficulty with this matter is that our topic is about World War

1. Since we are English this will make the documentary very hard because we will be slightly biased towards our side of the argument.

• We can sort this issue out by not including our own opinions on the documentary unless we have to, that way no one can accuse us of being biased.

• A good example is “ supersize me” where the man who is narrating and doing the 30 day trial of eating only fast food is biased, he only mentions about fast food and their companies but doesn’t mention anything good that these companies have done.

Ofcom Rules And Regulations• Our topic is about how the weapons in world war 1 work. So we

have to be careful when doing our interviews about what we say and who we say it too.

• Some content of what we discuss may not be suitable for different types of people we interview.

• For example in the documentary “Aileen, life and death of a serial killer” by Nick Broomfield Nick would not be aloud to interview a 9 year old kid about what they think about Aileen brutally killing men.

• We can overcome this by organising our interview in advance and getting permission and explaining to the public what we will be discussing before we

record them.

Accuracy• Channel 4 and Five take the issue of viewer trust very seriously. Viewers are

entitled to expect that programmes are accurate and true and the audience must not be misled. This obligation applies to all types of programming, including entertainment programmes with factual elements. Portraying real events, whether in documentary, features, factual entertainment, drama or any other programme, which the viewer is entitled to take at face value, must respect truth and accuracy. Programmes must be honest, fair and accurate and must not mislead viewers.

• For example in “supersize me” the presenter does not tell the truth as it really is and he all so over exaggerates some of the topics he was discussing which makes him in-accurate.

• We will keep the documentary balanced by telling the truth about everything we say that way there will be no chance of our documentary becoming un-balanced.

Balance

• Balance is where we must keep our documentary balanced on both sides of the argument so as not to seem biased that ay we will not upset anyone who is supporting one of the sides of documentary.

• A great example is the documentary called “supersize me” because all the presenter talks about is the bad effects of eating fast food making it very unbalanced.

• The simple way of keeping our documentary balanced will be too make sure both sides of our argument are equal.

Impartiality

• Linking back to slide 6 ‘Balance’ we will need to show both sides of the story and both views equally and not our personal opinion.

• A great example for this is the same as slide 6 which is the documentary called “supersize me”

• We will equally argue and explain both sides so as not to seem biased for a certain side of the argument.

Subjectivity

• Web definitions: ‘Judgment based on individual personal impressions and feelings and opinions rather than external facts.’

• Our interviews will show different judgments, impressions, feelings and options and we’ll make sure we have an equal amount of contrasting interviews to keep the audience entertained.

• A brilliant example for this is “Aileen life and death of a serial killer” because of the way presenter bonds with Aileen and asks here the question , and how she feels and what her opinions were.

Opinion

• Opinions are what we feel think/ feel about the argument in our documentary.

• A good example for this is “Aileen, life and death of a serial killer

• For our documentary we will make sure that we include our opinions but in a non biased way. We will also include opinions from different ages of people when we are doing our public interviews.

Bias

• We have to be very careful while filming as what we say may be seen as bias as we’re English, But then again we may have a different angle to many past documentaries as we are young people and therefore have not been badly effected by the first world war or ignore what the media say to a certain extent.

• This relates to a lot of the examples for the previous slides which is “supersize me” where the presenter only talks about the negatives of fast-food

and not the positives making it very biased.

Representation

• Web definitions: – The action of speaking or acting on behalf of

someone or the state of being so represented.– The description or portrayal of someone or

something in a particular way or as being of a certain nature.

• The best example of this is “Aileen, life and death of a serial killer” because the interviewer is representing Aileen and what she stands for .

Privacy• We must avoid the unfair treatment of individuals or organisations in

programmes. If the programme you are making involves criticising or making any damaging allegation about any living individual or organisation, seek advice from your programme lawyer. Any significant infringement of privacy of an individual or organisation, in the making or broadcast of a programme, must be warranted by the public interest. – Independent Producer handbook

• We have to understand the interviewee’s privacy so if they don’t want to be on camera we can’t force them and we need to make sure none of our questions are intruding there privacy and asking nothing we wouldn’t want on camera.

• The best example of this would be “Aileen, life and death of a serial killer” because the interviewer is very careful when to talking to Aileen when talking to her about her private life.