In February I was interviewed by a BBC TV crew for a programme which will be broadcast in the autumn. They recorded outside Nottingham University and caught the incident where a man hurled some very heavily soiled cat litter over the windscreen and bonnet of our campaign van. I filmed 23 seconds of the aftermath – here. It will be interesting to see how much of the extensive footage is broadcast. In the meantime, my thanks to Ray for passing on the following:
The BBC is making a documentary about violent young females which will be broadcast as part of a gender season on BBC 3 in Autumn/Winter 2015.
The film makers hope to include stories of domestic violence, where a women is the perpetrator. If this is something you can help with then please contact the producer, Fiona, directly on: fiona.blair@bbc.co.uk or 0203 614 0041.
The film makers are keen to hear from as many men as possible, especially those in the 18-35 age bracket, who have been affected by female violence.
The deadline is tight as filming will take place in June and July. If you do get in touch with Fiona all information will be in complete confidence.
You have to ask, why is the deadline tight? Has it come as a sudden shocking revelation to the BBC that men as well as women are the victims of violence at the hands of opposite-sex partners? We can be sure that the domestic violence narratives in the ‘gender season’ will overwhelmingly concern female victims and male perpetrators, with the odd reference to ‘men can be the victims of domestic violence, too’, and the like.
We can also be sure the BBC won’t report that the group perpetrating and suffering the highest levels of domestic violence are lesbians. Government statistics used to distinguish between gay men and lesbians as victims of domestic violence, but no longer do so. Hmm, why might that be?
@rahsoft2015
I suspect the reason there is always a time limit in these situations, is because the arguments and conclusions of the documentary have already been decide in many private meetings held over several months, long before the filming even begins. The interview stage is just the final part of a very long process.
Just be aware that their questions, no matter how seemingly friendly, are not designed to gain any new insight into the subject. All they are really looking for at this stage, is a few people to confirm whatever they have already decided. And to further facilitate this, they have a myriad of journalistic slight of hand techniques at their disposal.
Including…
*Undermining your opinions by using a subtly barbed introduction. Often recorded afterwards.
(e.g. Many men have become bitter and angry at the advances of female success. Here is Jo bloggs, a long time critic of female rights)
*Unfairly editing any caveats you may have used to rationalise your statement.
(e.g. I agree with capital punishment but only for the crime of high treason. Becomes simply… “I agree with capital punishment”)
*Asking seemingly irrelivent or hypothetical questions to tempt you to speculate about something you haven’t thought through or are not particularly interested in and then broadcasting your answer as though it was an unsolicited statement of a deeply held belief.
(e.g. Which part of history interests you most? Well Ive always been fascinated with the civil war as this period shaped many of the political freedoms we enjoy today. Will be translated as… Mr bloggs yearns for us to return to the seventeen hundreds.)
Journalists have countless numbers of these tricks and ploy to get you to “seemingly” say whatever they want you to say. Unfortunately there is little you can do to counter these strategies, short of insisting on editorial aproval (something only someone like Princess Diana could insist upon).
My advice is to really give a lot of thought to the main points you want to get across. Write them down and practice saying them (in the mirror or to a friend). And then stick to them and only them, no matter what, even if they are not even related to the question they want you to answer. Study a few famous politicians being interviewed and learn from them how to redirect and reframe the interview. Use phrases like…. “Well the real question here is….” “Thats interesting but a more important question would be….”
Above all remember that when dealing with today’s BBC you are walking into the lions den and no matter how friendly or sympathetic they seem, to them you are just a patsy they intend using to promote their own already entrenched opinions.
Good Luck
David
Scapegoating indeed! Why put an age restriction on the survey data collection unless you want to artificially manipulate the facts to try and draw a covertly skewed outcome of results? Typical, biased, anti-male BBC! I bet that clever little stunt was dreamt up by some feminist who managed to convinced the producers that they were only partially scoping the male demographic for some other reason. I’m too cynical and long in the tooth to buy into this sort of shite.
Hi
I have actually emailed them( the email address in the article) to get more information, and I may consider providing such information.
I have offered a perpsective from that of a disabled person as well especially given the hand wringing article from the gruand deciding that abuse( dv) of disabled people) is women only.
All thanks to …. women aid.
have a look for yourself( if it is ok with mike for me to provide the link?)
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/18/abuse-disabled-people-sexually-abused-england-cuts-services#comment-52425267.
have a question for everyone here, have anyone had dealings with these kind of people in the BBC. i know mike has and unfortunately you were set up. So has anyone any advice in handling these people?
18-35 is likely to be their target audience.
many people cling to the myth that the older generation of dv perpetrators is male only and women victim only.
Hi Mike,
That is a very good point. The fact that Lesbian relationships have disproportionatly higher instances of domestic violence, compared to that of heterosexual relationships, is a fact that even the most mendacious feminists have trouble explaining away, as it completely debunks one of the core tenets of thier whole rotten ideology. And that is the precise reason we should be highlighting it at every opportunity.
btw…Well done on fighting the good fight in the election. Out of small acorns great oaks are made.
All the best
David
Reblogged this on World4Justice : NOW! Lobby Forum..
If they are interested in young women then I guess they think they’ll get stories about that age group from the male equivalent. It’s also likely they will characterise female violence as being something that affects the younger generation, effectively scapegoating them to protect the gender as a whole.
Very interested to hear about the gay stats… just to be clear… they used to record gay male and lesbian female violence stats separately and now they are combined? If so, we know it’s cos gays have the lowest levels of DV and lesbians have the highest. Which is uncomfortable in what it says about the base natures of men and women. But perhaps your question was more rhetorical. =)
Reblogged this on ¡Los españoles merecen saberlo, por la Paz y la verdadera Igualdad en España!.
Good question. Two possible answers occur to me:
1. This might be in relation to a programme for BBC3, which caters for a younger audience.
2. It might be part of the narrative that female perpetrators tend to be younger, which is true, but the same is also true for male perpetrators, and that’s never mentioned.
And why ‘especially those in the 18-35 age bracket’?