"I would expect the BBC to be stricter, more appropriate."
"If you're exaggerating something for comic effect it could be offensive."
"I'd say impartiality is much more important than offensiveness. If stuff is biased you may not realise it…"
No, those aren't the words of BBC producers, politicians or notes from a BBC Trust meeting…they're a youngish woman from Manchester, an older man from the same city, and a man from Derry respectively.
Talking to audiences about standards at the BBC – what they should be and how it should meet them - provokes particularly strong reactions, because people care. The BBC has always had a unique relationship with its audiences; they make it clear that they expect nothing less than the very highest standards and they are justifiably quick to take the BBC to task if they feel it gets something wrong.
But if the BBC can meet the expectations of those audiences, it proves it deserves their trust – and that trust is vital to the future of the BBC. That's why getting the BBC's editorial guidelines right is so important; they're not only a vital tool to support programme-makers in their day-to-day editorial decisions, they also set the standards which the BBC should meet, and provide the framework against which complaints are considered. They are a clear set of principles which the BBC has to live up to.
The new editorial guidelines have been published today, following a review which happens every five years. For the first time in the BBC's history, we asked licence fee payers for their input when they were being revised.
You may wonder why we have consulted the public on what is essentially a guide for producers, both internally and externally, in making considered editorial decisions on BBC content.
But those decisions involve judgements on balancing the BBC's right to broadcast challenging and innovative work that tests assumptions and stretches horizons with responsibilities to audiences, contributors and others.
Therefore we felt it would strengthen that bond of trust with audiences by clarifying the principles and values that they expect.
Impartiality is one of the areas that audiences have told the Trust they feel strongly about, and it's a concept that absolutely remains part of the BBC's DNA. It's the Trust's responsibility to ensure that BBC remains impartial, and it's the area where we've made the most significant changes to the editorial guidelines by extending the requirements for ‘due impartiality' to apply to controversy within a much wider range of subjects – religion, science, culture, ethics, and others.
In the past the BBC's definition of impartiality and where it should apply referred to ‘news and programmes about matters of public policy or political/industrial controversy' – but with huge changes in society and technology over the last few years, it was clear to us in the Trust and to licence fee payers that that definition needed to be broadened.
I'm very aware that there may be some concern out there that higher editorial compliance standards mean less risk-taking and less creative content.
We will monitor these concerns as the new editorial guidelines take root – it's important to ensure that they're implemented in a way that doesn't overcomplicate the process of actually making great content. But we're clear that high editorial standards aren't a trade-off with risk-taking and creativity; in fact, having those clear, high standards in place gives content producers certainty to enable them to take risks.
But let's give the last word to a licence fee payer from Manchester, who learnt more about the proposed guidelines in our research: "If these Guidelines are being used to produce the content then they're doing a good job."
