The BBC upheld just one complaint out of a dozen it investigated, its first complaints bulletin has revealed – painting a picture of an organisation that rejects the vast majority of criticism.
The Corporation is being made to disclose details about complaints every fortnight after a battle with broadcasting watchdog Ofcom, in a bid to force it to become more transparent.
The first of the new BBC complaints bulletins, published yesterday, offered the bare minimum of detail.
But it was enough to throw new light on why the Corporation battled so hard to keep details of its complaints a secret.
The BBC upheld just one complaint out of a dozen it investigated, its first complaints bulletin has revealed
The BBC was inundated by 8,377 complaints during the two weeks from 30 October to 12 November, more than 5,500 of which were about particular programmes.
But it only completed investigations into 12 problem broadcasts during that period – and rejected all but two of them as groundless.
It upheld one complaint – an objection to bias on Radio 4’s PM show – and partially upheld another, about an April episode of Victoria Derbyshire’s eponymous BBC2 show.
Both of them were to do with coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict, although that is not made clear in the bulletin.
A BBC source said that the vast discrepancy between the number of complaints coming in the door and complaints being upheld was an indication that many of the objections were unjustified.
‘Complaints are taken really seriously but the fact that someone complains doesn’t automatically mean the point is justified, and we have lots of complaints which are clearly a result of lobbying or campaigning,’ the source said.
‘With 95 per cent of UK adults using our services each week and our channels having the biggest and most talked-about shows it’s no surprise lots of people have an opinion and when we make mistakes we aim to put them right.’
However, even after its battle with Ofcom, the level of detail in the BBC’s complaints bulletin stands in stark contrast to the watchdog’s own bulletins about commercial broadcasters – including ITV, Channel 4 and Sky.
Ofcom’s fortnightly report sets out precisely how many complaints each broadcaster has received for which programmes.
It also gives a broad description of the issues people have complained about, such as ‘due accuracy’, ‘scheduling’ or ‘generally accepted standards’.
It upheld one complaint – an objection to bias on Radio 4’s PM show – and partially upheld another, about an April episode of Victoria Derbyshire’s eponymous BBC2 show
By contrast, the BBC’s bulletin only names programmes that have registered more than 100 complaints – in this case, episodes of Strictly Come Dancing and Have I Got News For You – and does not give any indication of what the complaints were about.
It also fails to declare which complaints it will actually investigate, as Ofcom’s equivalent bulletin does.
And, despite having months to prepare for the publication, the BBC also failed to give details of the decision-making behind its adjudications yesterday.
Instead, it listed a link to a website where it will eventually publish top-level details of the complaints that have been upheld. The Victoria Derbyshire show was listed there but there was no mention of the PM incident.
Last night, a BBC spokesman insisted: ‘We are publishing the full information Ofcom has requested.’
And he added that the BBC is in fact more transparent than other broadcasters because its publishes the figures itself rather than relying on Ofcom to do so.
However, there is a crucial difference between the way complaints about the BBC and complaints about rival broadcasters are handled.
People who complain to Ofcom about BBC programmes are told to complain directly to the BBC.
They can only escalate the problem to the watchdog if they are unhappy with the way the problem has been dealt with first by the BBC’s executive complaints unit and then by the BBC board.
By contrast, people can complain directly to Ofcom about programmes on ITV, Channel 4 and other commercial broadcasters.
The watchdog will make a decision about whether to launch a full-scale investigation, and will sometimes do so based on a single complaint.