Tories Examined By ITC

The ITC’s Programme Complaints and Interventions Report for April was published today. The report has all the ingredients for a Jackie Collins novel, party politics and problem sex.

The Conservative Party’s Party Election Broadcast was one of the subjects under investigation. In the broadcast concerned, the Tories took an imaginary glimpse into the future, claiming to look at life as it might be under a Labour government.

13 viewers complained that the broadcast was unfair and was misleading in speculating about the future in this way. The ITC concluded that the broadcast made clear to viewers, both visually and audibly, that it was no more than an imaginary, if partisan, look into the future; it did not find that its Programme Code had been breached.

Another interesting case in the report was MTV’s Loveline programme. In this American show, members of a studio audience and telephone callers receive advice on their love lives from a doctor. ITC monitoring found that the programme included detailed discussions of sexual problems that were relevant only for a sexually active and mature audience and were inappropriate for showing before the watershed. The ITC advised MTV that, although it accepted that this was a programme of educational value, its scheduling so early in the evening, 8pm, breached the Programme Code on tastes and decency grounds. MTV has removed the show from the schedules and promises that it will only return at a much later slot.

ITC: 0171 306 7743