Work

ducating Yorkshire was a British docusoap focused around a school in Yorkshire. The cameras were set up all around the school to capture the daily events which happen at a secondary school. The documentary was an observational documentary because it captured everything which happened around the school and turned it into an episode with a narrative. Throughout the documentary the producers had to take in ethical issues and legal issues. Accuracy is when information is factually correct. Throughout the documentary the producers made sure the information in the documentary was factually correct. An example from the programme is when the head teacher Mr Mitchell says that the school was in the top five worst schools in the area. This information was accurate as it was obtained from an external source which was Ofsted with statistics to back it up.

The BBC news at 10 is a factual news programme produced by the BBC, one of the ethical issues is accuracy this is very important for a news programme as the purpose is to inform. The producers of the programme would have to fact check any facts which would appear in the programme. It is important for news programme to report the truth as if they were to report something untrue it could lead to the audience becoming less trustworthy of anything else the programme reports. An example from the broadcast is the story about the BT accounting scandal where BT hid losses of £145 million the statistic came from BT itself which is a reliable source. When the BBC report breaking news it makes sure it collates all the correct information as when there is breaking news there are a lot of inaccurate information floating about. The BBC also need to be able verify a source when they are reporting about a topic as if they report anything wrong it could lead to them being sued by the person involved for slander.

Privacy is a human right for any human being, if a producer wants to include someone in his programme they need to have contracts giving them permission. An example from BBC news is the leaked dossier claiming Donald Trump had ties to Russia, at the time the source wanted to be protected so his name was not revealed. His name was later revealed but if the BBC were to release his name beforehand it would have been a breach of his privacy. 

When filming ‘Educating Yorkshire’ there were numerous legal issues that the production team had to face. Access is when a person is given permission to film an individual or location. The producers of ‘Educating Yorkshire’ gained access to filming the school as well as the member of the staff and the pupils at the school. They provided consent forms and whoever signed them were featured in the programme, if the consent forms were not signed and people in the programme were featured it would have been a breach of their privacy. Also any of the students who were under the age of 18 would have the consent forms signed by their parents.  In the programme there were 64 cameras placed around the school, Mr Mitchell made sure certain areas of the school weren’t filmed such as the staff room because some of the staff felt it was an invasion of their privacy.

Representation is how people, places, objects and events are shown. In ‘Educating Yorkshire’ the producers tried to represent the teachers and students fairly throughout the episodes. In one episode Kamren a student at the school is presented as a bad pupil, one issue the producers faced was making sure they didn’t edit the programme to make Kamren look worse than he actually did. This could make the programme subjective as the viewpoint is based on personal feeling opinions. If the producers did not show the other side it would be unbalanced, balance is showing both sides of the story without favouring one. An example of balance comes from BBC news at 10 when they showed people who agreed with Donald Trump’s policies and people who disagreed. BBC news at 10 is also impartial as the anchor never expresses his opinion and remains neutral throughout the broadcast.