BBC Radio 4 'Document' Programme of 30 July 2007
OSPA's Complaints Upheld


This BBC programme became a matter of strong concern to OSPA and OSPA members, and led to a succession of complaints and responses between them and the BBC.  First there were complaints from OSPA members who disputed the programme's veracity and honesty.  The BBC's initial responses did not satisfy, and the OSPA office became increasingly involved.  After making several representations, OSPA submitted formal complaints to the BBC Editorial Complaints Unit in January 2008.  In March the Complaints Unit made a finding in favour of OSPA, upholding the key complaints.  That seemed gratifying, but the Complaints Unit then declined to broadcast these findings, saying that it was sufficient for them to be mentioned on the BBC's website.  OSPA thought that unsatisfactory since the average listener would not know about it.  OSPA therefore appealed against that decision to the BBC's Editorial Standards Committee (of the BBC trustees). 

That appeal was heard in November 2008. After much delay and several postponements by the BBC the appeal finding was published at the beginning of July on the BBC website http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/appeals/editorial_appeal_findings.html.  The Editorial Standards Committee's conclusion said that "it shared the complainant's dismay at the failures of the programme but that it appeared to represent an isolated example of poor programme-making skills".  It noted that there was already "an upheld finding in the public domain which recognised the flaws in the original programme".

The Editorial Standards Committee's finding accepted OSPA's complaint that the Summary of the Editorial Complaints Unit's finding that had been published earlier on the website was unsatisfactory.  The Committee ruled that the Summary should be revised, to refer to the guidelines that had been breached.

The Committee rejected OSPA's request that the findings by the Editorial Complaints Unit should be broadcast on-air in the same way as the original programme had been broadcast.  They agreed that it "would have been an appropriate and timely remedy" to have broadcast the correction in the same series in July 2007, but that it was no longer appropriate now so long afterwards when the audience would have changed.

These findings demonstrate that OSPA members and the Association itself were right to make the fuss we did about the allegations in the broadcast.  We can regard it as a moral victory even though the hurt, offence and misrepresentation caused by the programme cannot be remedied.

In view of the importance of these issues to OSPA members and to the Association's own reputation, fuller details are set out below.

The programme's allegations

This programme, broadcast on Radio 4 but also heard widely in Nigeria, drew on allegations that senior British colonial officials corruptly manipulated pre-independence elections in Nigeria, amongst other wrong doings. Several OSPA members sent complaints to the BBC about the programme. None of the complainants felt satisfied by the replies they received, which contained bland assurances such as that all BBC programmes were ?thoroughly researched? and were made ?to the highest editorial standards?.

As well as the allegations about Nigeria, the BBC programme contained comments by Professor David Anderson, Professor of African History at the African Studies Centre at Oxford University, which extended the allegations as applying to ?almost every single colony?.  In response to that assertion OSPA sent a letter to Professor Anderson in November on behalf of 18 OSPA members drawn from 12 different colonial territories (including the three Regions of Nigeria), asking him what evidence he had to justify that statement.  No written reply was received from Professor Anderson, but after a reminder had been sent to him he expressed in a telephone call his anger at our enquiry.  That correspondence was copied to the BBC Director-General, Mr Mark Thompson, asking for his comments too.

Investigation by the BBC Editorial Complaints Unit

In December the Director-General replied saying that the BBC took these matters ?very seriously indeed?.  He suggested that the complaints could be submitted to the independent Editorial Complaints Unit for fuller investigation.  In January 2008 OSPA submitted a formal complaint, in three parts - concerning the allegations about Nigeria, the supplementary statements by Professor Anderson, and the content of the BBC's responses to those members who had complained.  See Annex A below.
 
The Editorial Complaints Unit delivered its finding in March.  See Annex B below.  The Unit upheld the three most important points in OSPA's complaint, excluding the part about the BBC's responses to members.  It found that the programme did not provide adequate evidence to support the allegations, that it did not meet the standards in the BBC guidelines for achieving accuracy, that it did not include evidence that ought to have been mentioned, and that it gave a misleading impression that certain claims were not in dispute and therefore probably true.

A summary of these findings was published later on the complaints page of the BBC website www.bbc.co.uk  which records complaints that are investigated during each quarterly period. OSPA considered that confining the BBC's admissions that the allegations in the programme were unsubstantiated and misleading to an obscure website that listeners would not know about nor have easy access to was not enough to rectify the harm and offence caused by the programme.  Moreover, the summary on the website was too concise and did not describe the essence of the Editorial Complaints Unit's finding.  OSPA's appeal to the BBC Editorial Standards Committee is at Annex C below.

Annex A

The text of OSPA's complaint submitted to the BBC Editorial Complaints Unit on 22 January 2008 is as follows:

The programme was based upon several allegations by Mr Harold Smith, a former contract officer employed by the Government of Nigeria between 1955 and 1960, which were summarised by the BBC as being  that "Britain tried to rig Nigeria's first democratic elections before independence in 1960".

OSPA represents people who had been members of the Colonial Service (after 1954 called Her Majesty's Overseas Civil Service) employed by the colonial governments in Nigeria and other territories.  OSPA's declared functions include guarding the good name and reputation of HMOCS and its antecedents and  supporting any member who seeks to advance that object.

OSPA's complaints are in three parts.  One part concerns the allegations made by Mr Harold Smith in respect of preparations for elections in Nigeria.  The second part concerns supplementary statements made by Professor David Anderson relating to other colonial territories as well as Nigeria. The third part concerns the content of the responses made by the BBC to complaints that had been submitted by people who had heard or knew about the programme. These three parts are treated separately, as follows:

Allegations by Mr Harold Smith about Nigeria

1.   The programme did not allow for objective judgement or provide a fair balance of views on controversial and unsubstantiated statements by one person. 

Comment: Four other people were asked in the programme for comments on Mr Smith's statements, as well as his wife.  The four were Professor David Anderson, of Oxford University, whose published work gives prominence to accounts of violence under British prominence to accounts of violence under British colonial rule; Patrick Wilmot, described as an "academic and novelist" who taught in a Nigerian university after independence;  a Nigerian former trade union leader and political activist whose real name was not disclosed, and Gerald Summerhayes, a retired Colonial Service official who had been in Nigeria in the 1950s.  Only one of these four - Mr Summerhayes - was in a position to challenge Mr Smith's statements from first hand experience.  This was not a fair balance of views in relation to the content of Mr Smith's statements.

2.    The programme's research about the subject under discussion (namely the conduct of elections in Nigeria during British rule, and related events) was inadequate and remiss in that it made no reference to published accounts by recognised academic authorities and ignored the many official documents available in the National Archives.  The only reference to the archives was the undue emphasis placed on the fact that two personal files, not necessarily directly concerned with the elections, were closed for 100 years.

Comment: The programme gave undeserved publicity and appearance of apparent veracity by virtue of the BBC's moral authority to unsubstantiated statements by one person.

It ought to have been clear to the programme presenter and the producer and other senior management people that Mr Smith's allegations were unlikely to be true and were without convincing corroboration.  It was wrong for the BBC to have presented them in a manner that suggested they were probably true.

3.     The programme publicized allegations of dishonesty and criminality against a large number of British civil servants, including some of the highest rank, in a manner that suggested that they were true, without providing sufficient opportunity for their rebuttal.
   
Comment:  British officials who were directly concerned with the events at the time believe that the allegations are not true and should never have been presented as if they were.

Statement made by Professor Anderson

4.     The programme allowed Professor Anderson to extend Harold Smith's allegations against British officials in Nigeria to British officials "in almost every single colony".

Comment:  The programme did not give any opportunity for that allegation to be questioned.  It directly besmirches the integrity and reputation of many thousand British officers who served in Her Majesty's Overseas Civil Service, and indeed of the governments themselves.  The surviving members of that former Service, some of whom were involved in detailed election arrangement in many of the colonies, most strongly deny and resent the assertion which they regard as insulting and know to be untrue.  It is derogatory to the reputation of all those who are no longer living and who cannot now answer for themselves.

5.      The programme again relied on the authority of Professor David Anderson to support the allegation that British officials had falsified the result of the Nigerian national census in 1952.

Comment: The programme reported the view of one British Colonial Service officer, Mr Gerald Summerhayes, who could only deny his personal involvement in any falsification, but the overall line of the programme gave a clear impression to the listener that the allegation was probably true.  Other British officials who were responsible for the census know that it is not.   

The BBC's Responses to Complaints about the Programme

6.      There were several letters of complaint addressed to different parts of the BBC by listeners.  Many complainants were dissatisfied by the replies they received.  I ask that all the correspondence attached be reviewed by the Unit because of the overall dissatisfaction with the BBC's responses.

7.     The following documents contain some of the complaints and the replies:

              Mr D V Mountain to Director-General, BBC, 31 July. 

              Mr John Smith to Mark Damazer, Controller, Radio 4, 4 September
              with enclosure. 

              Mr K J Barnes to Mark Thompson, Director-General, 16 August. 

              Mr D V Mountain to Dame Patricia Hodgson, 24 September, with enclosures B,
              C and D, including letter from Ethan Kennedy, BBC Information, Complaints
              Coordinator, 24 August.

              Mr Philip Sellars, Executive Producer, BBC, to Mr John Smith, 5 October.

              Secretary, OSPA, to Professor David Anderson, 11 October, copied to
              Mr Mike Thompson, Mr Mark Damazer and Mr Mark Thompson, all at BBC,
              asking for their comments about the extent of the research behind the programme
              and about how much briefing had been given to Professor Anderson before he
              made his contribution.

              Mr D V Mountain to David Gillies, BBC, 28 October.

              Secretary, OSPA, to Mr Mark Thompson, Director-General, 13 November.

              Secretary, OSPA, to Mr Mark Damazer, Controller, Radio 4, 13 November,
              with five specific questions which have not been answered.

              Secretary, OSPA, to Mr Mike Thompson, Presenter, BBC, 13 November, with
               the same five questions which have not been answered. 

              Mr D V Mountain to Rebecca Asher, Project Manager, BBC Trust Unit,
              26 November.

              Mr Mark Thompson, Director-General, BBC, to Secretary, OSPA, 23 November.


Annex B

The text of the reply from the BBC's Head of Editorial Complaints, dated 17 March 2008, is as follows:
















Annex C

Appeal submitted to the Editorial Standards Committee of the BBC Trust on 12 June 2008


This appeal is against the decision by the Head of Editorial Complaints not to broadcast his finding on complaints submitted by the Overseas Service Pensioners' Association which he had upheld.

The OSPA is not satisfied with the decision by Mr Fraser Steel that a broadcast statement is not appropriate in this case.  The reasons for our dissatisfaction follow.

Mr Steel says that the content of the programme did not cause detriment to any identifiable individual or organisation.  Yet he agrees that "an allegation of widespread electoral malpractice by Colonial Service officials in the 1959 Nigerian elections lies in general against some, perhaps many, but by no means necessarily all members of the Service in Nigeria at that time ...".  He also mentions the extension of the allegations to apply to British officials "in almost every single colony".  He refers to the terms of Ofcom's fairness and privacy remit which mean that "it (Ofcom) can only entertain complaints where there is a suggestion of detriment to identifiable individuals or organisations".

We cannot accept the validity of this argument.  The allegations in the programme were directed at the generality of Colonial Service officers serving in Nigeria and "almost every single colony".  Every member of the Service feels it as a general slur, as Mr Fraser Steel acknowledges.  A person who heard and believed the broadcast and who then met or came to know of a former member of the Colonial Service might think along the lines "Oh, he is (probably) one of those people who the BBC said were engaged in rigging the elections in Nigeria and all the other former colonies; what a disgraceful episode", or "In the Colonial Service, were you? Well, the BBC has told us of the kind of fraud and electoral trickery you and your lot got up to in the colonies, starting with Nigeria as I recall".

It seems absurd to say that because not every single member of the Colonial Service in Nigeria or elsewhere is alleged to have been personally involved in "malpractice", that means that the reputation of the Service as a whole, which was an identifiable organisation, did not suffer detriment.  Any member of an organisation of which it is alleged that "perhaps many" members were engaged in illegal and improper activities will feel personally offended and traduced.  As individual members of that Service they are easily and frequently identified, and will thus be associated in the minds of BBC listeners with the defamatory allegations that were broadcast.

The OSPA is an organisation that is known to represent nearly 5,000 pensioners (and their widows) who were members of the former Colonial Service and Her Majesty's Overseas Civil Service, who served in Nigeria and all the other former colonial territories.  The allegations in the Document programme therefore damage the reputation of this Association by causing listeners to believe that OSPA represents people who in their official duties engaged in fraud, deceit and criminality which led directly to "so many assassinations, so many murders, so many thousands killed" and "50 years of absolute bloody hell" (quotations from Mr Harold Smith's broadcast statement).  It is impossible to accept that all this does not amount to "a suggestion of detriment to identifiable individuals or organisations".  There are several thousand more people who are not OSPA members but who were members of the Colonial Service/HMOCS and whose character and reputation have been besmirched equally.

Mr Steel refers to Ofcom's "test of proportionality" which causes it to broadcast a summary only in a minority of cases.  We believe that the widespread publicity which the Radio 4 programme attracted in Britain and Nigeria and perhaps elsewhere, coupled with the BBC's general reputation for accuracy and truthfulness which leads the majority of listeners to believe what they hear, fully merit having the ECU's ruling broadcast.  In our view a refusal to broadcast the ruling, and to let it lie largely concealed on a website that few listeners would know of, let alone have access to, would be grossly disproportionate in terms of the balance of publicity.

A separate but related issue on which we wish to appeal is the very great difference between the detailed finding set out in Mr Fraser Steel's letter and the wording of the "Summary" published on the BBC Complaints website.  In our view the website summary gives a very much weaker version of the finding.  For comparison, the very brief summary published in the OSPA journal, the Overseas Pensioner, is clearer and more succinct, as follows:

"It found that the programme did not provide adequate evidence to support the allegations, that it did not meet the standards in the BBC guidelines for achieving accuracy, that it did not include evidence that ought to have been mentioned, and that it gave a misleading impression that certain claims were not in dispute and therefore probably true."

We therefore request the Editorial Standards Committee to agree that the substantial parts of the Editorial Complaints Unit ruling, and not merely the present website summary, should be broadcast on the same services as the Document programme itself was broadcast.