http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2734500/Benefits-Street-2-begins-filming-deprived-crime-hit-area-Stockton-Tees-sparking-anger-MPs-locals.html
"They don't give a damn as long as it brings
in the viewers. They don't care if anyone gets hurt" - Person living on Kingston Road, Stockton.
'We are getting it 24/7 down here. They will edit
the truth so it looks like lies and edit the lies so it looks like the
truth" - Person living on Kingston Road, Stockton.
'I think it is disgusting it is making it our
street look like a hell hole. They are claiming it is a programme which shows
everyone in the community helping out but it's not." - Person living
on Kingston Road, Stockton.
'There is no doubt this is about exploiting
vulnerable people in order to make money. I know they will say it is about
trying to give people a voice, but all they will do is expose them to the full
glare of the national media" - Alex
Cunningham, Labour MP for Stockton North
"I don't want them here making a programme which will show people in the
worst possible light and potentially do such huge damage. For the producers
it's easy ratings for a few weeks, but the damage they do can last much
longer." - James Wharton, Tory
MP for Stockton South
"The vast majority of people
know that the programme plays to negative stereotypes and I'm certain it won't
reflect the amazing sense of community we have here in Stockton" -
Stockton Council leader Bob Cook
"There are some brilliant people in Stockton and
I think the programme tries to show the worst.I used to be a fan of Channel
Four before Benefits Street started. It disappoints me." - Eileen Johnson, Labour councillor for Norton South
"When it aired earlier this year Benefits
Street attracted widespread controversy, with critics branding it 'poverty
porn' and it received 1,800 viewers' complaints. The series was investigated by
regulator Ofcom owing to the huge number of complaints"
"It has become Channel 4's
most popular programme since the 2012 Paralympics, attracting audiences of more
than five million"
http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/jan/10/channel-4-stitch-up-benefits-street
"They were very clear and
transparent with everyone on the street about what the nature of the programme
was, why they were there and what the nature of the end product was." -
Ralph Lee, Channel 4 head of factual commissioning
When asked about the programme being branded as
"poverty porn" by some critics, Lee said: "I am deeply
uncomfortable with the phrase. It's inaccurate and patronising towards people
who take part in these programmes and open their lives up. It's quite offensive
to the people who make them, and make them with diligence and integrity. It's a
phrase I resent quite heavily."
When asked about the social media backlash from the
public, Lee said: "I don't think you should judge the programme by the
extreme reaction represented by a handful of very intemperate tweets."
"It opens a window on part of our welfare
state, our country, and if what we see is shocking, then the question is
shouldn't we be changing the system? We are really good in Britain at
ignoring extreme poverty and pretending it doesn't happen." - The
editor of the Spectator magazine, Fraser Nelson
"I don't think this is a freak show, I think
it portrays them in quite a positive light. A lot of the characters are ones
that I personally warm to. The villain of the piece isn't the people, the
villain is the system that makes them lead lives in the way that they do."
- The editor of the Spectator magazine, Fraser Nelson
"What struck me is that it was called Benefits
Street and then three-quarters or more of the programme actually followed one
storyline which was about a petty criminal and shoplifter and how he lived on
the proceeds of his crime, rather than the reality of what people face when
they live on benefits," - Labour MP, Dame Anne Begg, the
chairwoman of the Commons work and pensions committee
"Part of the problem of projecting the extreme
cases is that people then extrapolate that and say that applies to everybody
who is on benefits. There wasn't anybody who was a typical benefit claimant
featured on the programme at all. There was a huge imbalance." Labour
MP, Dame Anne Begg, the chairwoman of the Commons work and pensions committee
http://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/11471252.Benefits_Street___39_a_myth__39__says_Teesside_academic/?ref=mr
“The idea of 'benefit ghettos' where unemployment
is a 'lifestyle choice' is a powerful one that helps justify the Government's
cuts to welfare budgets. Yet our research has demonstrated that this is a myth,
in the sense that it does not reflect the facts of the matter.” -
Professor Rob MacDonald of Teesside University
“Programmes like Benefits Street are not
serious documentaries, despite claims made by the producers to be giving a
voice to people who otherwise would not have one. Instead, they are crude and
gimmicky entertainment shows out to make a fast buck for television executives,
trivialising important issues and perpetuating negative stereotypes by
exploiting those people entitled to state support to make ends meet.” -
Alex Cunningham, Labour MP for Stockton North
http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/9116701/britains-dirty-secret/
"We have, as a country, grown used to
pretending they don’t exist; we shovel them off to edge-of-town housing estates
and pay them to stay there in economic exile. We give them welfare for the
foreseeable future, and wish them luck in their drug-addled welfare ghettos.
This is our country’s dirty little secret, which has just been exposed by a
devastating Channel 4 documentary. And the left are furious."
"The biggest scandal of Benefits
Street, which Channel 4 is unlikely to reveal, is that White Dee is
behaving rationally in deciding not to work...
Dee is a single mother with two young
children. Were she to earn, say, £90 a week as a cleaner, then the system
would reduce her benefits by £70 — an effective tax rate of 78 per cent on
that £90 she’s earned. She’d thus be slaving away all week for £20 — far
less than the minimum wage"
"If she landed a
£23,000-a-year job, her effective tax rate would still be 74 per cent – so
she’d end up just £5,975 a year better-off than if she’d spent the
year sitting on the sofa watching daytime TV and chatting to her pals on the
street. If she then worked extra hours, or earned a pay rise, she’d keep a
pitiful 9p in every extra pound paid. This is nothing to do with indolence.
Which of us would work at a 91 per cent tax rate?"
"So the tabloid critics are
wrong — these people aren’t scroungers, they’re reacting in a way that any
of us would in the same situation."
"These 91 per cent tax rates
ought to be a national scandal, raised regularly in Parliament. This is why the
people of Benefits Street don’t
work — and MPs who talk about ‘scroungers’ should ask what they’d do in
the same situation. "
"Make a documentary about
poverty in Uganda and you could win an award. Look at problems in Britain and
you’re reported for thought crime"
http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/tv/news/a543116/benefits-street-essential-documentary-or-poverty-porn.html#~oUTlA5LuukaWaa
"Television producers hunt
for unsympathetic examples of unemployed people - in this case, on a
street in Birmingham; they portray them in the worst possible light; and they
fuel the pervasive sense that people on benefits are feckless scroungers," - The
Independent's Owen Jones
"Last year's Skint was basically Benefits Street under a different name and the
ratings-grabbing Big Fat Gypsy Wedding franchise feels like it is now the blueprint for
all C4 docs - laughing and pointing at the vulnerable, under the guise of a
serious social and cultural study"
"In this climate I don't think there is a
more important job for programme makers than to record what life is like on the
receiving end of the latest tranche of benefit cuts. In fact it's not just
important, it's essential." - Channel 4's head of documentaries Nick Mirsky
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/12/benefits-street-poverty-porn-british-fury
"British society seems to
require a regularly-updated register of sanctioned hate figures, about whom
it's OK to say more or less anything; people who form a vital pressure valve
for this terrifying pent-up societal wrath"
" I didn't hate anyone in it.
I liked them. A lot of what they had to put up with looked absolutely awful,
but there also seemed to be far more authentic community spirit than I've seen
on TV since Postman Pat's Magic Christmas. How you could come away feeling
anything other than affection for most of the people involved is beyond me."
""Benefits Street" is a title
cynically chosen to push buttons, and that ploy has worked"
Folk Devils and Moral
Panics (1972) - Stanley Cohen
A moral panic occurs when "[a]
condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a
threat to societal values and interests". Those who start the panic when they fear a
threat to prevailing social or cultural values are known by researchers as moral
entrepreneurs, while people who supposedly threaten the social order have
been described as "folk devils".
Stanley Cohen
(1987) defines moral panic as a sudden increase in public perception of the
possible ‘threat to societal values and interests’
Amine Zidhou - University
of Miami
“Creating consent (hegemony) is never a
simple act. It is rather the result of the social structures and the cultural
patterns that dictates for each group its behaviour and for each
institutions its practices.”
Stuart Hall
"The mass media play a crucial
role in defining the problems and issues of public concern. They are the main
channels of public discourse in our segregated society"
"When blacks appear in the documentary/current
affairs part of broadcasting, they are always attached to some 'immigrant
issue': they have to be involved in some crisis or drama to become visible
actors to the media."
"There has been little, attempt
either in drama, documentary or features to explore and express the rich,
complex, diverse and troubled experience of blacks."
Richard Dyer
A stereotype “is not merely a
short-cut…it is something more. It is the projection upon the world our own
sense of value,” (The Role of Stereotypes, 245).
“it is nor stereotypes, as
an aspect of human thought and representation, that are wrong, but who controls
and defines them, what interests they serve,”
“the use of stereotypes, has to be
acknowledged as a necessary, indeed inescapable, part of the way societies make
sense of themselves, and hence actually make and reproduce themselves,”
By using stereotypes, we are
expressing “an agreement about a social group, as if that agreement arose
independently of, the stereotype. Yet for the most part it is from the
stereotype that we got our ideas about social groups,”
“Stereotypes are highly
charged with the feelings that are attached to them. They (stereotypes) are the
fortress of our tradition, and behind its defences we can continue to
feel ourselves safe in the position we occupy” (Dyer, 11).
http://visual-memory.co.uk/daniel/Documents/marxism/marxism11.html
Public Service Broadcasting
http://www.channel4.com/info/corporate/about/channel-4s-remit
Channel 4 remit : (a) demonstrates innovation, experimentation and creativity in the form and content of programmes;
(b) appeals to the tastes and interests of a culturally diverse society;
(c) makes a significant contribution to meeting the need for the licensed public service channels to include programmes of an educational nature and other programmes of educative value; and
(d) exhibits a distinctive character.
