SIR
- I have just taken part in a nightmare. Not one of the usual kind
from which one wakes to the comforting reassurance of familiar objects,
but under the glaring lights of a television studio as a so-called
panellist in the first of the new BBC-2 series, "Brass Tacks.".
The programme purported to be an examination of
modern farming methods and, particularly, their effects on the various
types of meat produced for the public to eat.
This is a perfectly proper question for consideration
and as a farmer and consumer I willingly accepted the invitation
to participate. Perfectly proper, too, for the BBC to be the medium
through which such an important subject should receive and airing:
the Corporation is, after all, our servant and our friend, and a
neutral, reliable and unbiased source of information and opinion.
Is it not?
But here is the rub. The programme was scheduled
to run for 50 minutes and the first half-an-hour was taken up by
a film which, in the many weeks of its making had been contrived
to constitute a slashing attack on modern meat production from the
farm to the shop-counter. It included, in most doubtful taste, harrowing
scenes shot in abattoirs and unashamedly used dramatic music to
heighten the emotional effect upon the viewer.
There was little attempt at balance, just an assembly
of the |
worst
that could be dragged up for the deadliest impact.
The remaining 20 minutes of the programme were
given over to discussion between four people in the studio in Manchester
and about nine people on a farm in Kent, the latter being representatives
of a tiny minority of farming people who try to refuse any "unorganic"
aid.
My nightmare started with the film and the realisation
that we had been set up, without preview, to answer what came over
as a deliberately loaded attack with almost no time to do so properly;
to have to sit and watch the savaging of a first class industry
in which so many people work most devotedly with unselfish and ill-rewarded
dedication; to have to quell one's anger and try to offer something
quick and sensible when the subject called for quiet and thoughtful
debate.
Perhaps, though, the worst part of the nightmare is
the damage to the BBC itself: to its integrity and social usefulness.
To its right to claim our respect and affection. If so it is a nightmare
for us all. On Tuesday night Auntie Beeb showed us that the quest
for those damned viewing figures can turn her into a sour, cantankerous
and spiteful old woman - a dangerous creature of whom the strongest
and most righteous should beware.
CHARLES JARVIS, Chairman, British
Farm Produce Council
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