2. • Accuracy
Glossary
– Web definitions: ‘The quality or state of being correct or precise.’
• Balance
– To keep the argument/documentary even and fair on both sides.
• Impartiality
– Lack of comparison, correspondence, or suitableness; incongruity.
– Indivisibility into equal parts; oddness.
– Inequality; disparity; disproportion; difference of degree, rank, excellence, number, etc.
• Objectivity
– Web definitions: ‘judgment based on observable phenomena and uninfluenced by emotions or personal prejudices.’
• Subjectivity
– Web definitions: ‘Judgment based on individual personal impressions and feelings and opinions rather than external
facts.’
• Opinion
– Web definitions: ‘A view or judgment formed about something, not necessarily based on fact or knowledge.’
• Bias
– Web definitions: ‘Show prejudice for or against (someone or something) unfairly: "the tests were biased against
women"; "a biased view of the world".’
• Representation
– Web definitions:
• The action of speaking or acting on behalf of someone or the state of being so represented.
• The description or portrayal of someone or something in a particular way or as being of a certain nature.
• Access
– Web definitions: Obtain, examine, or retrieve (data or a file).
• Privacy
– Web definitions: The state or condition of being free from being observed or disturbed by other people.
– The state of being free from public attention.
3. Difficulty getting interviews
• People we film may be nervous or shy in front of the camera they may also
feel nervous about what they have to discuss.
• We could possibly resolve this by offering to pixelate their face if they do
not want to be recognised by people who view the footage later on.
• The public may avoid us if we try to ask them for an interview because
they may find us intimidating.
• Dress up in casual clothes, so we don’t look intimidating and ask the
person politely and maturely so as not to intimidate them.
• There are some great examples in the documentary called “Aileen, life and
death of a serial killer” by Nick Broomfield. Nick has to be very polite,
mature and careful when interviewing Aileen because she is a crazy mass
murderer and although she is reasonably calm throughout her interviews
she loses her temper big time in the last interview before she is about to
be executed because Nick asked her the wrong question.
4. Biased opinion on subject matter
• Our difficulty with this matter is that our topic is about how young
people are portrayed by the media. Since we are kids this will make
the documentary very hard because we will be slightly biased
towards our side of the argument.
• We can sort this issue out by not including our own opinions on the
documentary unless we have to, that way no one can accuse us of
being biased.
• A good example is “ supersize me” where the man who is narrating
and doing the 30 day trial of eating only fast food is biased, he only
mentions about fast food and their companies but doesn’t mention
anything good that these companies have done.
5. Ofcom rules and regulations
• Our topic is about how the media stereotypes us. So we have to be
careful when doing our interviews about what we say and who we
say it too.
• For example we have to have permission firstly in order to interview
the public and we must pixelate peoples faces out who are in the
background of our footage.
• Some content of what we discuss may not be suitable for different
types of people we interview.
• For example in the documentary “Aileen, life and death of a serial
killer” by Nick Broomfield Nick would not be aloud to interview a 9
year old kid about what they think about Aileen brutally killing men.
• We can overcome this by organising our interview in advance and
getting permission and explaining to the public what we will be
discussing before we record them.
6. Accuracy
• Channel 4 and Five take the issue of viewer trust very seriously. Viewers
are entitled to expect that programmes are accurate and true and the
audience must not be misled. This obligation applies to all types of
programming, including entertainment programmes with factual
elements. Portraying real events, whether in documentary, features,
factual entertainment, drama or any other programme, which the viewer
is entitled to take at face value, must respect truth and accuracy.
Programmes must be honest, fair and accurate and must not mislead
viewers.
• For example in “supersize me” the presenter does not tell the truth as it
really is and he all so over exaggerates some of the topics he was
discussing which makes him in-accurate. For example he goes on about
how it completely ruined his sex life which I think is extremely over
exaggerated.
• We will keep the documentary balanced by telling the truth about
everything we say that way there will be no chance of our documentary
becoming un-balanced.
7. Balance
• Balance is where we must keep our documentary balanced on both
sides of the argument so as not to seem biased that ay we will not
upset anyone who is supporting one of the sides of documentary.
• A great example is the documentary called “supersize me” because
all the presenter talks about is the bad effects of eating fast food
making it very unbalanced.
• The simple way of keeping our documentary balanced will be too
make sure both sides of our argument are equal. We will make sure
we don’t over balance with the documentary in favour of the
students side of the argument but neither will we over balance
towards the media’s side of the argument. The best way to control
the balance is to make sure there is documentary footage and
interviews roughly representing equally representing both sides of
the argument.
8. impartiality
• Linking back to slide 6 ‘Balance’ we will need to show
both sides of the story and both views equally and not
our personal opinion.
• A great example for this is the same as slide 6 which is
the documentary called “supersize me” the reason
being is because the presenter of “supersize me “
makes the documentary extremely unbalanced against
the positives of fast food. It is clear from the start that
the presenter is 100% against fast food making him a
very bad presenter.
• We will equally argue and explain both sides so as not
to seem biased for a certain side of the argument.
9. Subjectivity
• Web definitions: ‘Judgment based on individual
personal impressions and feelings and opinions rather
than external facts.’
• Our interviews will show different judgments,
impressions, feelings and options and we’ll make sure
we have an equal amount of contrasting interviews to
keep the audience entertained.
• A brilliant example for this is “Aileen life and death of a
serial killer” because of the way presenter bonds with
Aileen and asks here the question , and how she feels
and what her opinions were.
10. Opinion
• Opinions are what we feel think/ feel about the argument
in our documentary.
• A good example for this is “Aileen, life and death of a serial
killer. The main reason for this being that the producer of
the documentary was very understanding with Aileen and
listened to all of her opinions. He did it in such a way that
he made us (the audience) have second thoughts if Aileen
was as bad as she was made out to be by the media even
though she was a mass murderer!
• For our documentary we will make sure that we include our
opinions but in a non biased way. We will also include
opinions from different ages of people when we are doing
our public interviews. This way we should cover a larger
variety of opinions from different generations of people.
11. Bias
• We have to be very careful while filming as what we say may be
seen as bias as we’re young people, But then again we may have a
different angle to many past documentaries as we are young people
and know how young people feel about how the media is
portraying us so maybe people would feel more for young people
and try to stop it or ignore what the media say to a certain extent.
• This relates to a lot of the examples for the previous slides which is
“supersize me” where the presenter only talks about the negatives
of fast-food and not the positives making it very biased. He only
talks to overweight people who have had fast-food problems, but
the truth is most ordinary people can manage their diets roughly
Ok without having to stop eating fast-food completely.
12. representation
• Web definitions:
– The action of speaking or acting on behalf of someone
or the state of being so represented.
– The description or portrayal of someone or something
in a particular way or as being of a certain nature.
• In our documentary we will represent ourselves as the
students side of the argument and in interviews we
will represent people in an equal manner.
• The best example of this is “Aileen, life and death of a
serial killer” because the interviewer is representing
Aileen and what she stands for .
13. Privacy
• We must avoid the unfair treatment of individuals or organisations
in programmes. If the programme you are making involves
criticising or making any damaging allegation about any living
individual or organisation, seek advice from your programme
lawyer. Any significant infringement of privacy of an individual or
organisation, in the making or broadcast of a programme, must be
warranted by the public interest. – Independent Producer handbook
• We have to understand the interviewee’s privacy so if they don’t
want to be on camera we can’t force them and we need to make
sure none of our questions are intruding there privacy and asking
nothing we wouldn’t want on camera.
• The best example of this would be “Aileen, life and death of a serial
killer” because the interviewer is very careful when to talking to
Aileen when talking to her about her private life.