Galloway in the House

Respect and Gorgeous George have issued a statement explaining the reasons for participating in this year’s Celebrity Big Brother. Galloway’s first reason for wanting to participate, raising money for Palestinian charities is commendable. His second, that of wanting to reach a wider audience and win new people to radical politics is more of a step in the dark. As I have said before I have my doubts on this one but I’d love to be proved wrong.

Galloway has also be accused of neglecting his constituents during this period. Respect has issued the following rebuttal to such claims carried in today’s Guardian:

“George Galloway’s office was dealing with constituents’ problems on Friday just as we do every day of the week, including Christmas and New Year. Our office was, to my knowledge, unable to respond to only two calls from people saying they wanted to raise constituency problems - one who did not leave a phone number to return their call on and one where it was not possible, despite repeated attempts, to hear the number left. And this despite the fact that we were bombarded with dozens of fatuous calls from journalists like Dodd and that BT, unfortunately, failed to install the phones in our new office which was due to open on Friday.

Most MPs did not hold surgeries on Friday because of the parliamentary recess. But we did. A dozen constituents came to the surgery which we hold every Friday from 4pm to 7pm. The issues were predominantly the same as they always are - appalling housing conditions resulting from the year’s of neglect and lack of investment by the New Labour government in Whitehall and the New Labour Council in Tower Hamlets, and immigration and asylum problems arising from this government’s iniquitous, racist immigration and asylum legislation.

It was New Labour’s propaganda before last May’s election that George would not represent his constituency properly and it has remained so ever since. And yet not only has George held surgeries almost every week since his election and taken up and vigorously pursued hundreds of constituents’ problems, he has spoken at more public meetings on campaigning issues around the constituency than his New Labour predecessor did in all the eight anonymous years of her incumbency. He has combined this with taking the Respect message around the country speaking to thousands and playing a very significant role building the international anti-war movement.”

This does not address the fact that George will not be available for parliamentary votes.

Of greater concern is Dodd’s other article in which Channel 4’s spokeswoman stated that it was obliged by Ofcom to ensure ‘due impartiality.’

This requirement is derived from Section 5 of Ofcom’s Broadcasting Code which is in turn based upon requirements in the Communications Act 2003 and the European Convention on Human Rights.

If Channel 4 moves to gag Galloway on these grounds it will, in my view, be both acting dishonestly and going beyond the requirements of the Code. Of course, the Act provides Ofcom with a degree of discretion and the regulator may decide to intervene (although under the new arrangements this would take place after transmission unlike arrangements under the old ITC).

‘Due impartiality’ allows a degree of judgement to be exercised and a light entertainment programme like Big Brother is clearly not the same as a news or current affairs programme. Ofcom’s own guidelines make it clear that context is important. Galloway is not there as a reporter or a presenter and his views are clearly intrinsic reasons for his prominence as a public figure.

Section 5.11 does require broadcasters to show ‘due impartiality’ on matters of current policy and controversy. Clearly the War and Palestine would fit within this ruling. However, ‘due impartiality’ is typically measured over a series taken as a whole and any measure would have to apply to both the full coverage and the edited highlights.

Ofcom’s rules also cover authored programmes and personal views. These must be highlighted but is there any doubt that Galloway has a partisan perspective. As far as ‘identification’ is concerned he does that himself. It also has rules covering 'undue prominence' and Galloway may fall foul here.

I suspect that Channel 4 is trying to cover itself. From a programme-making point of view they would be foolish to extract all controversy from the programme and knowing the organisation I expect that they will push the regulations as far as they can. We’ll see.