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BBC admits Mark Thomas three-strikes report inaccurate

By CMU Editorial | Published on Wednesday 27 October 2010

Those crazy motherfuckers at the BBC have admitted that parts of a feature made by that Mark Thomas dude about the copyright section of the controversial Digital Economy Act that aired on ‘The Culture Show’ earlier this year were “inaccurate”. However, they deny the item was “biased and prejudicial”. Or, rather, it was biased and prejudicial, but they say that viewers should have realised this was the case and treated the feature in that context.

Thomas’ feature aired in February as the then Digital Economy Bill was working its way through parliament, and dealt mainly with the three-strikes elements of the new legislation.

According to trade body UK Music, which submitted the official complaint about the feature, the ten minute item gave less than two minutes to those who supported the new laws, and over eight to those who opposed them. After BBC management gave UK Music’s initial complaint short shrift, its boss man Feargal Sharkey took his moans to the BBC Trust.

In his feature, Thomas claimed that if the DEB became law – which it subsequently did, of course – that film and music companies could order people’s internet be cut off on the “bare minimum of evidence”. The process for net suspensions is actually still being worked out, though the Digital Economy Act does put some obligations in place on content owners to ensure they can’t cut off people on whim.

The Beeb’s Editorial Standards Committee admitted yesterday: “The section of the report on the likely effects of the new bill had given the audience an inaccurate description of how the process of disconnection would work. In attempting to paraphrase the legal complexities of the bill the report had not been sufficiently precise and had been inaccurate”.

The Committee also admitted that Thomas’ use of the word “criminalise” – ie that the Digital Economy Act would “criminalise” file-sharers – was inappropriate, though it stressed that the use of that word in this context had been discussed elsewhere in the programme.

With regards to bias, while it was clear Thomas had an agenda in the piece, the BBC argued that it was so blatantly obvious that viewers were unlikely to take the feature as a piece of independent BBC reporting, and therefore strict bias rules had not been broken. Though the organisatoin admitted that the programme’s producers could have better signposted that Thomas’ opinion piece was an opinion piece and was just his opinion etc etc.

The BBC’s standards people concluded that while Thomas’ piece might not have been 100% fair to the music industry, it didn’t really matter because only seventeen people watch ‘The Culture Show’. No, not really. But I bet they thought it.