The BBC is a world wide media company which is funded by tax payers of the UK. The BBC is one of many international companies which have to monitor and maintain many codes and conventions in order to retain consistency throughout the company.
When working for the BBC, specifically in radio, it is good practise to consider the codes and conventions of professional radio production in order to ensure that your production is as accurate, balanced and safe from negative criticism as possible. Clearly, radio has been around for many years and, as a result, many codes and conventions have been confirmed as correct and I will be discussing some of them in this article.
Accuracy:
Although it seems obvious, being inaccurate can cause inconvenience to listeners and encourage complaints and negative reviews from your listeners. For example, an inaccurate weather report about heavy snow could cause unnecessary concern amongst listeners and could be potentially dangerous if the audience took such reports seriously.Similarly, inaccurate news reports could cause controversy in factual radio - especially if the names of individuals are quoted incorrectly or if details in the report have not been confirmed. In order to illiminate accuracy errors in this area, it is always necessary to perform adequate research into the topic as well as ensuring all stories and reports are up to date.
On the subject of accuracy, the BBC say that in radio, you are asking the audience to "Trust you and to check that what you're saying is true and that your overall account isn't misleading"(1). As we can see from this quote, inaccuracy could mislead your audience and as a result, breaking their "trust" within you as a radio producer. Remember, if you break your audience's trust, they may be compiled to never trust your information in the future. This could lead to your show gaining a negative reputation among listeners.
In our particular magazine project, we will need to ensure that all of our reports and stories are as accurate as possible in order to avoid confusion and unprofessional practice.
Balance:
If you are running a radio show, especially one aimed at a wide range of audiences, it is important that your show has a sense of balance in all areas. More specifically, a balance in choice of music played on the show is an excellent way of engaging the audience and making sure that the show is suited to their age group. If all the music played is in the same style, it may cause certain listeners to feel isolated and uninvolved.
Similarly, a balance of different types of news stories can be essential within factual radio programming. For example. if all of your news stories are negative and gloomy, you may set the wrong impression to your audience - causing your show to gain a negative reputation. On the other side, showing too many positive news stories may make the show seem as though it is fabricating stories to hide the truth from the audience. In general, a good balance of all material, presenters and themes will make for an interesting and unique radio show.Within debates on the radio, balance is especially important in order to maintain a valid and impartial and objective argument. More specific, on political radio shows such as the "Sean Hannity show", balance is even more important to ensure that all parties gain sufficient respect and "air time" in order to ensure that bias is avoided.
When we create our show, it will be well worth considering the positive effect of having good balance within the show. For example, a good balance in our show could mean that a wider range of students and teachers could be engaged by the show as it will have areas of interest for everyone! Ensuring that we have good balance will ensure that our show is professional and evenly proportioned.
Impartiality:
According to the BBC, "Impartiality is one of the hallmarks of the BBC's journalism. Impartiality is also a matter of trust"(2). Impartiality consists of a mix of objectivity, balance and neutrality. When creating a radio show for the BBC, it may be easy to "take sides" when discussing a controversial story. However, such practises are biased and may influence the opinion of your audience. Instead, it is necessary to cover both sides of the story and then allow the audience to make up their minds - without trying to force their opinion in any way.
In addition, making an impartial judgement on a subject could cause controversy amongst your listeners. Taking this a step further, making false judgements or allegations about certain companies or individuals could land the show in considerable deep water and it could face prosecution.
As a result, it is always necessary to appear open minded on air - even if this is not the case. Ultimately, your job as a producer/presenter is to aid the audience to "make sense of events through disinterested analysis"(3) The word 'disinterested' implies that you should simply channel respective stories or news items directly to your audience without adding additional information or opinion which may effect the way your audience perceive the story.
Impartiality has defined links with objectivity which is defined as "Judgement based on observable phenomena and uninfluenced by emotions or personal prejudices"(4) Therefore, within a BBC radio show, making judgements about a story does not always mean that you are not being impartial. On the contrary, if your judgement is backed up with solely with evidence and with the absence of emotional influence, you may help your audience to make similar judgements if the need should arise. However, care should be taken to avoid being controversial over delicate, political or personal topics.
When on the topic of subjectivity, this can be seen as the opposite of subjectivity. As apposed to using external facts to reach a conclusion, a judgement is made based on your individual opinions and feelings which may, in serious cases, result in a breach of impartiality. In most cases, it is safer to rely on objectivity in order to avoid conflict or argument amongst your audience.
In our own project, we will have to ensure that we remain open to discussion and try to keep our opinion from swaying the opinions of other audience members during the show. This will make sure that we are not being biased or discriminative for one party over others.
Representation:
According to the A-Z of media and communication, representation is to "Show something in a particular context"(5). In radio, themes and ideas can come across in many different ways depending on how you interpret them. For example, when reporting a news story, you could emphasise certain areas of the text in order represent your style and context of radio show.
Representation can be used in the sense of "Symbolising something via a physical demonstration"(6) For example, an instructional broadcast may need to use descriptions and analogies in order to represent what they mean - but in a slightly paraphrased way in order to add extra meaning.
In our own project, we will need to work hard in order to represent our school in a way that we want to. We need to ensure that we leave the correct impressions with our audience towards the end of the show.
Access:
According to relevant media texts, "Access is the idea that opportunities should be provided for individual members of the public to produce their own programmes or articles for broadcast"(7) Specifically in radio terms, a typical convention is that access can be granted via the medium of call ins to the show. As most will probably know, factual radio call-ins can make radio shows more interesting, diverse or simply more open for discussion. Interestingly, making the show more accessible via the public can encourage a wider range of opinions and ideas when thinking about factual radio. It also provides an additional voice for external listeners to listen to in order to add to the balance of the overall show. In radio, access is normally "Free of editorial interface"(8) which can help to ensure that impartiality is retained throughout the show.Providing access to students and teachers in our show could be a valid dimension to the show. If we devised a way to provide access to such individuals, our show may have much larger appeal and interest for the wider school community.
Privacy:
Clearly, one of the BBC's highest priorities is to ensure that privacy of all staff and members of the public is maintained at all times. One of the most obvious conventions is to ensure that no personal details such as phone numbers or full names should be released on air in order to avoid the possibility of subsequent harassment or unwanted contact.
"The law allows people to bring actions for invasion of their privacy, for which the court can award damages. The level of damages is relatively low when compared to damages in libel. The highest recent award was £60,000. However, the legal costs of a case will usually be significantly higher than the damages awarded and are paid by the losing party".(8) As you can see above, the highest award for a breach of privacy was £60,000. Despite this being just a figure, it is a clear representation of just how serious a breach of privacy can be - especially if its your company who has to pay for such awards!
In terms of privacy, it is a convention that radio listeners should deserve to feel safe and secure whilst listening to the radio. As a result, radio producers should ensure that any personal information retrieved - normally phone numbers - should be protected in such a way that they are safe from the general public.
Since we are based within a school, it is of paramount importance that we take time to ensure that privacy issues are carefully monitored. Due to the fact that the majority of our audience will be under 18 years of age, a problem with privacy among students, or even teachers, could result in serious legal issues if hosted on-line or on the school website.
Bias:
Bias is the idea of supporting or discussing one side of an argument more than the other. In definitive terms, bias is described as "Prejudice in favour of or against one thing, person or group"(9)
In our project, bias will have to be avoided so that all subjects, year groups, genders and stories can have an equal favour and will gain no emphasis over others. This will help to maintain balance as well as giving an accurate and realistic insight into school life.
In conclusion, when we come to create our radio production, it will be completely necessary to incorporate many of these codes and conventions into our work in order to maintain a professional, up to date and engaging piece of radio programming.
Bibliography:
(1) BBC, 2012, Title: Truth And Accuracy, Available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/academy/collegeofjournalism/standards/truth-and-accuracy/truth-and-accuracy
Accessed 27/2/2013
(2),(3) BBC, 2012, Title: Impartiality, Available at:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/academy/collegeofjournalism/standards/impartiality/impartiality
Accessed 27/2/2013
(4) Wordnetweb, 2011, Title:Wordnetsearch 3.1, Available at:
http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=objectivity
Accesed 26/2/2013
(5),(6),(7),(10) Author: Stuart Price, 1997, Title: the complete A-Z Media & Communication Handbook, GreenGate Publishing services. Pages 198, 198, 3 and 25
(8) BBC, 2012, Title: Law-Privacy, Available at:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/academy/collegeofjournalism/law/privacy/law-privacy
Accessed 27/2/2013
(9) Google definitions, 2012, Title: Bias definition, Available at:
www.google.co.uk search Define:Bias
Accessed 27/2/2013
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