Chapter 13

Editorial Responsibility

Modern editing techniques and the speed of the operation, as the sheer volume of the output on all channels increases, has made editorial responsibility issues much more important.

This chapter is divided as follows:

• 13.1 Editorial Responsibility—An Introduction
• 13.2 Taste and Decency
• 13.3 The Range of Compliance Categories
• 13.4 Other Compliance Issues
• 13.5 A Look at Copyright
• 13.6 Key Points—Editorial Responsibility

13.1 Editorial Responsibility—An Introduction

 A Year with the Queen (2007)—Where It All Went Wrong!

Ever since ‘Queen-gate’, and perhaps a little late, the BBC and other broadcasters remind us regularly of our editorial responsibilities. ‘Queen-gate’ was where the Queen, in a trailer for a documentary series called A Year with the Queen (2007), was made to look as though she was angry at a remark made by photographer Annie Leibovitz when she asked the Queen to look ‘less dressy and remove her crown’. In the trailer, the Queen was seemingly seen to storm off in a huff, complaining to an aide, ‘I’m not changing anything, I’ve done enough dressing like this, thank you very much!’ The trouble was, the footage of a complaining Queen Elizabeth was filmed on her way in to see Leibovitz, not after the meeting. The trailer had completely misrepresented what had actually happened.

 Rough Justice—The Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing but the Truth

The basic rule is, tell the truth, as simple as that. Keep events in the order they happened in real life unless it is safe for you to move them about. I know the chronological order of an interview is often changed to improve the flow and join thought processes together more logically, but this must never result in any change of the sense of what was said. This would be misrepresentation, and that’s crime number one.

Recent exposures in the UK involving seemingly untouchable programmes, like Blue Peter and This Morning, have warned us all of the consequences of getting it wrong.

 The Royale Family—Only Joking, Ma’am!

As part of the team that produced an internal BBC ‘Christmas Tape’ in 1978, we got into trouble when we removed the word ‘discrimination’ from sport presenter David Coleman’s innocent question, ‘Have you ever experienced any sex discrimination?’ The trouble was that his interviewee was Princess Anne. We used her actual reply which was, ‘I don’t know…maybe once or twice’. With a broad grin, Coleman asked his next question: ‘What about Mark Phillips?’ to which Her Royal Highness answered, ‘There’s no one he’d rather be beaten by than me’. Good old university undergrad stuff, and luckily the BBC saw it that way too. The trouble was it got onto the front page of the Sunday People newspaper on New Year’s Eve with the headline, ‘ANNE TELE SPOOF, SHOCK FOR BBC’.

I still have the newspaper and the T-shirt.

I digress, I know, but it’s an example of how an innocent joke was made a potential subject for national debate. More seriously, great harm can be done to individuals who are the victims of such misrepresentation.

 Order, Order—Making Sure Cuts Don’t Change the Meaning

In the edit suite, just make sure that if you do have to swap events around or take a phrase out of context, the sense remains unaltered. Don’t shorten any sentence that changes the sentence’s meaning; for example ‘Chris Wadsworth doesn’t edit well if he’s tired’ down to ‘Chris Wadsworth doesn’t edit well’. You see what I mean; a phrase taken out of context can completely change the meaning of what was said originally.

 Screen Test—Passing the Test

Before doing any work for the BBC today, producers, directors, and editors have to take an online course where, by means of various examples of editorial dilemmas, you have to choose the best solution to the editorial problems presented to you. I found it a surprisingly useful exercise, even though I still mostly edit scripted dramas where we have fewer controversial editorial issues.

All the major UK broadcasters (BBC, ITV, Channel 4, and SKY) have this information on their websites. It’s worth a read, when you have a moment, and is bound to be more up to date than this publication.

The BBC itself has a lot of information on its website: www.bbc.co.uk/editorialguidelines.

Have a browse when you have a spare hour or two.

13.2 Taste and Decency

In these days of increasing concern about sex and bad language in broadcast material, let alone ‘political correctness’ or religious sensitivities, an editor, along with the production team, has to be more and more a custodian of a nation’s morals.

 Blue Peter—Keep It Clean!

Every programme broadcast on the main channels in the UK has associated with it a compliance form which lists all the words contained in the programme that could possibly be considered as bad language, and the programme is classified accordingly. In addition to bad language, any nudity, violence (sexual or otherwise), and religious references are also noted down alongside the timecode at which they occur. The acceptable limit of such content varies according to the broadcasting channel and the time of transmission. What is considered okay for BBC3 might not be suitable for a BBC1 audience, unless it is shown at a later time. In addition, a show populated with bad language or significant violence will almost certainly have a verbal warning transmitted before it goes out.

 The Moral Maze—Misrepresentation of the Distasteful

You might say that if a person actually speaks with obscenities left, right, and centre, then it would be a misrepresentation to tone down such dialogue. Yes, you’re right, but if the reduction in the frequency of such bad language is the only way to get your programme on the air, then I can’t see why not.

In any case, the reduction in the frequency of the bad language is so much better than ‘bleeping’, which in my opinion is as crude as the word it tries to cover. However, I know many regard bleeping as a more honest solution to the problem.

13.3 The Range of Compliance Categories

As an example of how well documented programme content is, here is a list of the topics covered on a typical compliance form.

Programmes are analysed for any of the following:

• Offensive language or gesture.
• Sex—Sexual content, sexual innuendo/reference, nudity.
• Violence—Real life, fictional, involving children, sexual violence.
• Imitative behaviour—Drug/solvent abuse, suicide, self-harm, hanging, other potentially dangerous behaviour, use of alcohol, smoking.
• Portrayal—Disabilities, religious, minorities, cultural sensitivities.
• Disturbing content—Disturbing images/sounds, disasters, accidents, kidnappings, terrorist acts, exorcism, occult, paranormal, horror.
• Impartiality and diversity of opinion—Personal view, authored, major controversial subjects/issues; Does it require a balancing programme?
• Accuracy—Reconstructions, anonymity issues.
• Fairness—Portrayal of real people in drama.
• Privacy—Secret recording, footage of suffering and distress, door stepping.
• Crime and antisocial behaviour—Interviews with criminals, demonstration of illegal activity.
• Editorial integrity and independence—Commercial, sponsor, or brand references; branded products featured; conflicts of interest: presenters, guests, production team.
• Politics—Opinion polls/surveys, interviews, appearance of party leaders.
• Other issues affecting transmission—Public figures as contributors, reference to public figures, sensitive content issues, restrictions on reuse.
• Interactivity—Competitions, audience voting, premium rate telephony, non-premium rate telephony.

As you can see, it’s a very comprehensive list. Phew, it’s a wonder how we are able to make anything anymore. But seriously, it’s worth knowing the categories of concern, and, along with your production team, to be aware of their implications.

13.4 Other Compliance Issues

 Light Fantastic—Dealing with Flickering Images

Flickering images and certain types of repetitive visual patterns can cause problems for some viewers who have photosensitive epilepsy. Television is by nature a flickering medium (because of the 50 Hz (or 60 Hz) refresh rate of interlaced scanning and the 25 Hz (or 30 Hz) frame replacement rate), so it is therefore not possible to completely eliminate the risk of television itself causing problems with some viewers, regardless of the content. An HD picture with higher line and scan rates reduces the perception of this type of flicker.

 The Light Programme—‘Harding’ and Other Compliance Tests

Back in 1993, the transmission of an advert in the UK for ‘Pot Noodles’ induced seizures in three people. This incident led the Independent Television Commission to introduce new guidelines to avoid a repetition of the problem. In Japan, four years later, it was reported that an episode of Pokémon led to over 750 hospital admissions, mostly due to seizures. Today, the content of all programmes, including advertisements and trailers, prior to transmission in various countries including Japan and the UK, has to go through and pass what is called a Harding Test. The test is based on research done by Professor Graham Harding into the problem of photosensitive epilepsy. The test is able to identify sections of a programme where the intensity and frequency of changing light or colour levels might trigger a person with photosensitive epilepsy to have problems.

The source of these changing light levels might be strobe lighting, flash photography, or just a shot of the sun through passing trees. If a sequence has failed in this way, the cure is to grade down the severity or frequency of the flashes until they pass through Harding without setting off any alarms. In some cases where repair is impossible, it means the removal of a shot altogether. Obviously such drastic action, if it happens after a dub and grade, can cause problems both of a technical nature and to the programme’s budget. It is good practice, therefore, to put a locked offline cut through Harding to act as a check that everything is within limits, or at least to highlight problem areas early enough so a solution is found while all the decision makers are still present or near the edit suite.

In certain cases, if the removal of such shots damages the reason for transmission, like flash photography at an important news event, a verbal warning is given instead: ‘This report does contain some flash photography’. I’m sure you’ve all heard something similar.

Here are some aspects about flashing images that are worth considering:

• Bright and rapidly flickering images should be avoided. It seems around 9 Hz is the worst.
• If the source of the flickering is restricted to a smaller area of the screen (25% say), then the effect will be less harmful and will, more often than not, pass through Harding.
• Flickering nearer the centre of the screen carries with it a weighting factor, as the effect on a sensitive viewer of such flickering is greater nearer the centre of the image as compared with the periphery.
• The range of brightness change in a flickering image is a crucial factor, and anything you can do to grade down such transitions can help greatly. A luminance key might help here to clip peak whites down a little.
• Changes in colour aren’t so serious unless they affect the red channel substantially, which seems to cause the most problems.
• Prominent and regular patterns that cover a large proportion of the picture area should be avoided, especially if they represent bars, spirals, or dartboard patterns.
• Moving or flickering regular patterns are particularly hazardous, so no close-ups of your Vertigo LPs going round on your turntable, please.
• Care also needs to be taken with computer-generated images, which, if sufficiently detailed, can cause a high degree of interference flicker between the two scanning rates.

13.5 A Look at Copyright

 The Price Is Right—Copyright and Other Issues

It is normally forbidden to reproduce picture, sound, or text media without the permission of the owners or creators of that media, who hold the copyright. In granting permission, a payment is usually made to the owners of the copyright. This permission can be time or location limited, thus we talk of UK or world rights to show and distribute material.

In the UK, the term of copyright of a musical composition is limited to the life of the author plus 70 years, while the term of copyright of a sound recording is limited to 50 years from the date of recording; for example all compositions composed by a songwriter who died in 1940 came out of copyright on 1 January 2011, or a sound recording made on 3 October 1960 entered the public domain on the same date of 1 January 2011.

Any archive footage (or music, for that matter) reproduced in a new programme has to be accounted for, to the second. For this reason, deals are usually done between the production company and the copyright holder to cover the use of many such clips over a wide range of programmes in order to save on admin, time, and money. Remember, copyright issues can extend to include posters on walls in the back of shot, so beware.

I know this is more of a production issue, but you should be aware of the restrictions these rules impose on your production, and thus on you.

Back in the edit suite, any music you find for your programme will have to be paid for at some stage, so it’s better to find out the cost of it early on, and certainly before you fall in love with the piece and set your complicated, multilayered montage to it.

13.6 Key Points—Editorial Responsibility

• It’s safer to keep events in the order they happened in real life.
• If you move material about, make sure the sense remains unaltered.
• An editor, along with the production team, has to be more and more a custodian of a nation’s morals.
• Some broadcasts insist that key personnel complete an online course about editorial dilemmas.
• Every programme broadcast on the main channels in the UK has associated with it a compliance form.
• Flickering images and certain types of repetitive visual patterns can cause problems for some viewers who have photosensitive epilepsy.
• In certain countries, programmes are tested for flickering images and strobe lighting in what is known as a Harding Test.
• It is normally forbidden to reproduce picture, sound, or text media without the permission of the owners or creators of that media, who hold the copyright.
• Any archive footage (or music, for that matter) reproduced in a new programme has to be accounted for to the second.
• Copyright issues can extend to include posters on walls in the back of shot.