On Friday we commented on the BBC’s coverage of the campaign by an English animation company, Blue-Zoo, to get fair treatment for English animation companies.
The BBC broadcast an animation Blue-Zoo had made for the campaign and followed it with the comment “So, could this mean the death of the British animation industry?”
The CEP made a complaint to the BBC about the inappropriate use of the word “British” when the story was specifically and unmistakably about England:
BBC Breakfast showed an animation by Blue-Zoo on English animators losing out to foreign animation companies – including those in Scotland, Wales and NI – because there are no tax breaks for English firms.
The animation was quite clear that it was an English problem, not British, and that the threat was to the English industry only. Immediately after the animation, the reporter said something along the lines of “So, does this mark the death of the British animation industry”.
Britain and England are not interchangeable words and it was made perfectly clear in Blue-Zoo’s animation that the issue was solely with England and not Britain. The reporter’s use of “Britain” and “British” were misleading and misrepresented Blue-Zoo’s campaign entirely. As part of the closing statement in the report, it will have left a lot of viewers mistakenly believing the report was about Britain when it wasn’t.
Subtly inaccurate summing up of video footage is a common technique in the propaganda industry, it has no place in a public service broadcaster.
The BBC have sent the following interesting response:
Thanks for your e-mail regarding ‘Breakfast’ broadcast on 28 August.
I understand you feel an item about the funding problems for animators shown on the programme interchanged the terms “English” and “British”, talking about the English industry, and the British industry in the same context in the same report.
We do not intend to use the word “English” when we mean “British” and vice versa. Such mistakes happen so instinctively that we can’t promise they will never occur again. However we do monitor this and every effort is made to keep such slips to a minimum and when these errors do occur they are swiftly pointed out.
We appreciate all feedback form our audience, whether positive or negative, and I’d like to take this opportunity to assure you that I’ve recorded your comments onto our audience log. This is an internal daily report of audience feedback which is circulated to many BBC staff including senior management, producers and channel controllers.
The audience logs are seen as important documents that can help shape decisions about future programming and content.
Thanks again for contacting us with your thoughts.
Regards
Ciaran McConnell
BBC Complaints
What is interesting are the following two lines:
We do not intend to use the word “English” when we mean “British” and vice versa. Such mistakes happen so instinctively that we can’t promise they will never occur again.
What the BBC are saying is that Britification – the replacement of England with Britain – is so deeply ingrained in the BBC, so institutionalised, that their reporters can’t help themselves, they say British when they mean English without even thinking about it.
The BBC has taken an important first step in admitting it has a problem. They now need to take the equally important next step and do something about it. Training needs to be provided for all BBC staff to explain the difference between England and Britain and why it is wrong to conflate the two terms.
The CEP will, of course, be more than happy to meet with the BBC to discuss their problem and any ideas they might have for dealing with the institutional Britification in the BBC.
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They would rather chew off their off hands than acknowledge the English.
September 2nd, 2009 at 9:34 pmI’m not trying to defend Auntie, but from my experiences people in England have been conditioned to call themselves British. I am getting on a bit and when I was a child I was English, over time we just got used to the idea of saying the B word, I think it all started in the late 60′s and early 70′s which as some will understand is when we started to be deprived of our identity. I realised through received prejudice that this was happening many years ago and made an effort to always refer to myself as English. It is now quite natural to say English but it took a long time to kick the bad habit. I make a point of telling the English who say they are British that it does not exist as a nationality and is really a political statement. I even tick my own kids off when they say they are British and point out to them that it is really a meaningless description of Nationality. I think the message is getting through to people so we all have to press on and just keep reminding people that they are English.
September 2nd, 2009 at 10:04 pmStrange that they instinctively manage to say Wales, Northern Ireland and in particular Scotland instead of “Britain” when they’re the case.
Don’t they all have to go on diversity courses? Shouldn’t “English” be included?
September 2nd, 2009 at 11:31 pmI think there are actually two different things going on here. There’s the ‘classic’ Anglo-British conflation of ‘English’ and ‘British’, whereby English people have traditionally assumed that everything that applied to England also applied to the whole of Britain: ‘Britain’ was essentially an extension of ‘England’, and the two words were interchangeable. This is more the ‘instinctive’ slippage that the curiously Irish-named Ciaran McConnell from the BBC referred to.
This old-fashioned form of Anglo-Britishness overlaps with the more modern and sinister replacement of ‘England’ by ‘Britain’, motivated by the desire to suppress English-national consciousness and demands for a separate tier of English-national governance. A more systematic and politically thought-through response is required from the BBC to overcome this tendency than mere vigilance towards an ‘instinctive’ habit of thought and speech. In other words, the BBC needs to be proactive in resisting what is essentially a falsification and distortion of the facts, motivated by a political agenda, and not just reactive, as in Ciaran McDonnell’s response: “We appreciate all feedback form [sic] our audience” – the Freudian slip between ‘from’ and ‘form’ here pointing to the inevitable web ‘feedback form’, which is indeed a convenient way to appear to be accommodating and acting upon audience reactions without requiring a serious response and dialogue.
This is simply not good enough. As I say, a more proactive and deliberate engagement is required on the part of the BBC. See, for instance, my Open letter to the BBC on reporting policy debates at the next general election, posted on English Parliament Online, which deals with the BBC’s systematic failure to make it clear to the listening and viewing public when political issues and policy debates relate to England only. I forwarded this to the BBC Trust (the part of the BBC responsible for responding to public concerns) two weeks ago and still haven’t received a reply: not even an acknowledgement. If you’d like to back up the letter, the email address to write to is trust.enquiries@bbc.co.uk. Thanks.
September 3rd, 2009 at 1:33 amThis is a passive response by the BBC, much like the one I received when I complained. It means in effect the remarks in the complaint have been ‘noted’, ie filed.
If I was the originator of the complaint, I would write back saying that I’m not satisfied with the response, and want the complaint progressed to a more senior level. They won’t do that until the initial level has had a chance to reconsider the matter, but I would request escalation anyway.
I would also state what it would take to satisfy the complaint, actually this should have been done initially. If it was my complaint I would specify that to resolve the issue, the BBC needs to undertake some positive action to ensure that staff are instructed to mention England when it is appropriate to the story, briefings and training perhaps.
It seems less than satisfactory to let the matter rest with the BBC’s first formulaic response.
September 3rd, 2009 at 12:42 pmI would advise against putting too much store on this reply from ‘BBC Complaints’. The reason is that e-mails sent to the BBC go to a call centre in Belfast where the staff are not even BBC employees. I suspect that Ciaran McConnell falls into this category. He is probably employed by CAPITA (a notoriously incompetent outfit) through which the BBC can screw its workers without them having recourse to BBC employees’ rights. It’s somewhat understandable, therefore, that CAPITA call-centre staff (such as our Ciaran here) aren’t too careful (or too bothered) about what they write.
I would be tempted to respond to that e-mail highlighting the ‘instinctively’ sentence and seeking clarification. This should result in your complaint being ‘escalated’ to a genuine BBC employee. It’s that kind of ‘follow-up’ complaint (rather than just the initial one) which really puts the wind up the Beeb. You should then get a different response from them.
September 3rd, 2009 at 8:17 pmThe problem with the BBC is that they now know that their license fee is under threat and they see Britain disintegrating and they dont like it. They’re still in shock that the SNP are in control of the Scottish Government. That’s why they have to threaten people with imprisonment if they wont buy a license. Britain isn’t a country. But the Zionist controlled BBC like to brainwash people into thinking that it is.Wake up.
September 3rd, 2009 at 9:32 pmThings will be much easier “after the revolution” when we re-name them the English Broadcasting Corporation.
September 4th, 2009 at 6:56 amFor instinctive read institutional
September 4th, 2009 at 10:11 amFunny how the bbc remembers to say English when reporting ‘our bad reputation’ abroad. Oh yes, we cannot say British here because that would include the lovable welsh,scots and n. irish who, as all we English know, are kind, considerate, sober and totally non racist.
September 8th, 2009 at 1:51 pmMistakes happen “instinctively”? Yeah, like the English instinctively not paying the licence fee!
September 9th, 2009 at 5:04 pm