BBC Guidelines

Summaries of important BBC Editorial Policy Guidelines.

Consent

Achieving Informed consent requires a potential contributor to be in possession of sufficient knowledge about your plans for the film so that they can make a reasoned decision to take part.

You should aim to obtain consent in a form that is provable. It is important to take notes and maintain records of conversations and other information given to contributors, relevant to their consent.

Standard contributor consent forms can formalise the consent process and prove copyright in a contribution. However, informed consent will often require providing more detailed information to a contributor, particularly if the contributor is under 18 or vulnerable in some way.

Generally, no contributor who has given properly informed consent has the right to withdraw it. However, the BBC would give due consideration to any requests to withdraw consent.

If you do not have informed consent for your contributors your film will not be compliant with the Fresh terms and conditions and will not be published to the site.

Consent forms can be found here: Over-18 or under-18.

Defamation

Any person can sue for damage to their reputation that is caused by a broadcast or online publication - that could be a film or other kind of content.

This area of the law is called defamation or libel.

A film could be defamatory of a person if the images and/or sound would tend to lower the person in the view of ‘right-thinking’ people generally.

It can have serious financial consequences for the BBC if anything on a BBC service is found to be libelous.

The claimant (or pursuer in Scotland) does not need to show that they suffered any actual damage, nor that what was said was false. On the contrary, the defendant (or defender in Scotland) generally has to prove that it was true.

Anything that is defamatory of another person or persons will mean that your film is not compliant with the Fresh terms and conditions and will not be published to the Fresh site.

Privacy

The Human Rights Act, which came into effect in 2000, includes a right to privacy.

Individuals can now take action to enforce that right. Often, they will ask the court to grant an injunction (or "interdict" in Scotland) to stop true stories about their private lives being made public.

If the person could reasonably expect privacy, the court will seek to balance the individual's right to privacy against the media's right to freedom of expression.

When broadcasting content such as a film or written information, which contains private details; each piece of private information will need to be considered separately. If any private information is shown in the form of pictures, whether moving or still, these will be looked at extremely carefully by the BBC lawyers.

If your film breaches another person’s right to privacy it will not be compliant with the terms and conditions and will not be published to the Fresh site.

Offensive Language

There are a range of words (e.g. mong, spastic), which may be offensive to particular groups of viewers, for example, members of faith groups and people with disabilities. Racist abuse is offensive to all sections of the audience (e.g. nigger, paki, chinkie).

Use of racist or other offensive words will mean that your film is not compliant with the FRESH terms and conditions and will not be published to the Fresh site.

Portrayal

Offensive or stereotypical assumptions must be avoided and people should only be described in terms of their disability, age, sexual orientation and so on when clearly editorially justified.

Violence

You should avoid including material that condones or glamorises violence, dangerous or seriously anti-social behaviour, or material that is likely to encourage others to copy such behaviour, unless clearly editorially justified.

Suicide, attempted suicide and self-harm

These should be portrayed with great sensitivity, whether in drama or in factual programmes. Factual reporting and fictional portrayal of suicide, attempted suicide and self-harm have the potential to make such actions appear possible, and even appropriate, to the vulnerable.

Care must be taken to avoid describing or showing suicide or self-harming methods in explicit detail, unless there is a clear editorial justification.

The sensitive use of language is also important. Suicide was decriminalised in 1961 and since then the use of the term "commit" is considered offensive by some people. "Take one's life" or "kill oneself" are preferable alternatives.

Care is also required when portraying, in factual or fictional content, conditions such as anorexia or bulimia. You need to be aware that the vulnerable, especially the young, may imitate or emulate behaviour and techniques depicted. Care should be taken to ensure that content is responsible and appropriate for the likely audience.

Safety

You should normally observe the law, both in the UK and other countries, unless there is clear editorial justification for not doing so. This includes ensuring that presenters, actors and contributors who are driving use seatbelts, fit child car seats correctly, wear crash helmets and use the correct mobile phone equipment.

Undue Prominence

The BBC needs to be able to reflect the real world and this will involve referring to commercial products, organisations and services. However, you must avoid any undue prominence of products or services. To achieve this you must:

ensure that references to trade names, brand names and slogans are not unduly prominent and are editorially justified.

not linger on brand names or logos and use verbal references sparingly unless there are very strong editorial reasons for repeated references to a brand.

only use material from advertising campaigns or promotions when clearly editorially justified. There may also be copyright considerations.

Prop Placement

Prop placement involves the supply of production props free of charge (or at a reduced cost) where the provision of the prop does not involve payment or other valuable consideration to the broadcaster, producer or a connected person and the prop does not represent a "significant" value to any of these parties (i.e. more than a trivial residual value).

There must be no arrangements guaranteeing that placed props will receive exposure in programmes or other content.

When props are accepted free or at a reduced cost there should be:

• clear records kept of all free or reduced cost props.
• no guarantee that any product or service will be featured and, if featured, no guarantee that it will be in a favourable light.
• no undue prominence of the prop which has been accepted.

If your film contains images or words that give undue prominence to a commercial product or service it will not be compliant with the terms and conditions and so will not be published on the Fresh site.