Production and practice

BBC’s safeguarding Trust –Reliable guideline to make TV documentary film?

Keywords: institutional forces, documentary practice, editorial dilemmas

There has been an increasing untrusting attitude towards BBC not only within the British society but also worldwide. As Chinese, we experienced its misleading reports on Tibetan Unrest early this year. In the beginning of December 2008, the BBC launched a website for Safeguarding Trust following the serious editorial breaches that occurred in the past two years.

Safeguarding Trust is “an editorial training programme which examines where to draw the line between legitimate media artifice and unacceptable audience deception… [it is] a compulsory course for all its staff and the independent production company that produce documentaries for it is also requested to take the course.

On its website, there is an Interactive Modules covers key across TV, Radio and online. The exercises aim to explore editorial dilemmas around shooting/recording, editing, interactivity, live broadcasting and 'as lives', and running competitions. It intends to help the editorial staff to “understand the principles involved and to develop the ability to make those sorts of judgments in the course of the daily work. “ The creative nature of the cultural and media industry has made it impossible to prescribe exactly where that line lies in all future cases. On its homepage, BBC claims that ‘Trust is the foundation of BBC, we are independent, impartial and honest.’ But the question is how reliable is this guideline for documentary production? How practical is it?

Nevertheless, it is good to have some guideline to reply on in the industry that deals with the representation of truth and reality, but is also high creative decisions. Anyhow, “decisions need to be made with regard to the specific circumstances of each production.” Here I also pose the question on the capability to present truth in our national media. Though it is clear to all that media is political censored in China, censorship appears in every society in different forms. Other than the political constraints and commercial generated limitation, how do media workers and documentary filmmakers in China face the dilemmas in shooting, editing, interactivity and live broadcasting? How do they draw the line between legitimate media artifice and unacceptable audience deception?

To know more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/safeguardingtrust/

Political Documentary-

'Zeitgeist, the Movie' (2007) & its sequel 
'Zeitgeist: Addendum' (2008). By Peter Joseph

Zeitgeist: the word itself comes from German language, which literally means time-spirit, ‘the spirit of the age and its society’. It describes the intellectual, cultural, ethnical and political climate of the era or a trend.

Keywords: political documentary, authenticity, human and society

Zeitgeist statement “'Zeitgeist, The Movie' and 'Zeitgeist: Addendum' were created as Not-for-Profit expressions
to communicate what the author felt were highly important social understandings which
most humans are generally not aware of. The first film focuses on suppressed
historical & modern information about currently dominant social institutions, while
also exploring what could be in store for humanity if the power structures at large continue
their patterns of self-interest, corruption, and consolidation. The second film, Zeitgeist: Addendum, attempts to locate the root causes
of this pervasive social corruption, while offering a solution. This solution is not
based on politics, morality, laws, or any other "establishment" notions of human affairs,
but rather on a modern, non-superstitious based understanding of what we are
and how we align with nature, to which we are a part. The work advocates
a new social system which is updated to present day knowledge, highly influenced
by the life long work of Jacque Fresco and The Venus Project.” www.zeitgeistmovie.com

Louis Theroux and the performative documentary

The purpose of the performative documentary, its construction, approached and entertainment value.

True life –a good form on reality TV show that worth widely practice? A good way to get young audience back to TV in China?