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8 February 2005
Rt Hon Tessa Jowell MP
Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
2-4 Cockspur Street
LONDON
SW1Y 5DH
Dear Minister
During recent correspondence with the BBC and Ofcom over the showing of the “Jerry Springer Opera” on TV, it was drawn to our attention by Ofcom that according to its founding remit, it deals with complaints only after an event, not before it.
I would like to draw your attention to this and to ask you if the way Ofcom is set up is ever under review. While appreciating that Ofcom does not wish, nor should be required, to get involved in the nitty gritty of vetting every TV programme, there is something odd about a procedure which will only attend to a fire once it is ablaze and do nothing beforehand to prevent it being set alight in the first place.
I would suggest to you that when there is a sizeable public protest about plans to air a programme - in the case of the “Jerry Springer Opera” something like 50,000 protests - this calls for some investigating intervention by a watchdog body such as Ofcom before the programme is presented to the public.
It would be helpful if you could address this anomaly in the way Ofcom functions and introduce measures that rectify it and so strengthen the protection to the public that this would give. Needless to say, I am disappointed that the BBC's own regulatory body was unable to see that the showing of this particular programme would cause great offence to a large number of its licence holders.
Yours sincerely,
Rev Bill Slack
General Director
Baptist Union of Scotland
cc Ofcom Contact Centre
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