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You’re a TV boss watching a recording of Room 101 featuring comedian Sacha Baron Cohen. It’s a great show. He nominates kosher food, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bible for inclusion in Room 101. Do you broadcast the programme or not?
This is a situation dreamt up for the recent BBC governors’ seminar on impartiality, designed to prepare TV editors for similar tricky decisions.
- Invite students to imagine they are the TV editors. What would they do? Talk about the meaning of impartiality and how this would affect the decision. Discuss other factors they would have to bear in mind. Ideas might include ratings, causing offence, free speech, media responsibility.
- How much would the context – the reasons he gives, whether it’s funny or offensive – matter? Do any of the three items chosen worry students more than the others? If so, talk about why.
- Ask students what principles would be set once they had made the decision about whether to broadcast. Then reveal the following: Sacha Baron Cohen also includes the Qur’an in Room 101. Are you still happy to broadcast?
For a written piece of work based on the discussion, tell students to imagine that the episode of Room 101 was screened, prompting complaints. Ask them to write a letter of complaint from one of the viewers. Was the viewer angry, upset, offended? Why? What do they think the editor should have done?
Then swap letters in class and write the reply from the BBC. Explain how and why the editor came to the decision to broadcast.
Read the other scenarios from the seminar, and responses from a panel of experts.
Would Channel 4’s Jon Snow agree to broadcast an unedited interview with Osama bin Laden? Would you employ a television newsreader who wears the veil?
Use the other situations as a way to debate controversial questions with students from a media perspective. Then reveal what the panel of experts said. Or use the panel’s responses as the starting point for the discussion.
"We discussed freedom of speech and responsibility of the press. The students would have struggled to talk about these things in the abstract, but this situation really brought their opinions out."
Kate Brown, Citizenship teacher
Credits
This quick activity was written by PJ White. The situations summarised here were devised for the BBC by Robin Kent and John Bridcut and published in The Guardian.
This resource and other free educational materials are available at www.redcross.org.uk/education