Show mishandled interview with couple after unseen court hearing, rules BBC Trust editorial standards committee
A BBC1 programme called Repossessed has been reprimanded by the BBC Trust's editorial standards committee.
The committee upheld a complaint about how Betty, the independent production company that made Repossessed, handled an interview with a couple whose house was under threat of repossession.
In the programme, shown on 6 January last year, an unnamed couple were seen having emerged from court having been given a possession order.
The distressed pair – known as Mr and Mrs A – vented their feelings about the judge involved to the show's production crew, which was not allowed to film the court proceedings.
After the episode was aired, the Judicial Communications Office complained to the BBC on behalf of the judge involved complained, alleging it was a 'one-sided view of the hearing'.
The complainant also argued that the judge had not been given a right to reply and 'the depiction of the judge presented a damaging and unfair representation of the judiciary'.
Although the committee upheld the complaints about fairness and accuracy and asked for the couple's strongest comments about the judge to be removed from repeats of Repossessed, it did not uphold the argument that the programme had unfairly represented the judiciary.
But it found that nobody from the production crew had sat in on the hearing to see if the couple's comments were fair and in context. It also found that the judge had not been offered a right to reply.
'As the production team were not there and had not researched what had occurred, the option open to them to achieve fairness was to put the couple's comment to the judge,' the committee concluded.
'The committee was concerned that because there was no production team member present in court, an appropriate context had not been given to Mr A's comments.
'There had been a failure to observe the guidelines on accuracy which require that output must be well-sourced, based on sound evidence, tested and presented in clear precise language. Facts had not been checked and allegations had not been corroborated … the production team had not witnessed events and gathered information at first hand.'
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