Beeb misrepresenting real Britain, warns gay activist leader

Published Tuesday 13 November 2007 at 15:30 by Matthew Hemley

Equity Diversity Conference: Leading gay activist Ben Summerskill has criticised BBC programming for failing to reflect the broad make-up of its licence fee payers.

The chief executive of the gay equality organisation Stonewall said that the way the Corporation represents the UK in its shows is being influenced by “a small number of people at the top of the organisation” and claimed the BBC was at risk of alienating audiences if it did not become better at portraying them.

He said: “I have always been a huge advocate of the BBC and I do think it has served historically as a cultural glue for so many people in this country. But I think it is putting the opportunity of continuing to do that in peril if it does not properly engage and portray the way Britain is in the 21st century, rather than the way a small number of people at the top of that organisation imagine it might be.”

In particular, Summerskill, who was addressing delegates at Equity’s diversity conference, said gay and lesbian people contributed around £200 million to the BBC’s annual £3 billion licence fee money but were still “massively underserved” by the Corporation. He referred to a recent survey carried out by Stonewall that showed out of 168 hours of primetime broadcasting there was just six minutes of “realistic portrayal” of gay and lesbian people’s lives.

He said that half of the references there were to gay people on the BBC during primetime made them the “object of jokes” and that lesbians were almost “entirely invisible”.

Stonewall’s research also showed that heterosexuals expected the Corporation to do better when it comes to portraying gay people and that they felt programmes should show communities they would not normally come into contact with.

Earlier in the day, MEP Michael Cashman praised Britain’s soaps, and in particular BBC1’s EastEnders, for reflecting aspects of society not usually addressed on television.

A former actor in the show, Cashman described soaps as the “Dickens of our time” and claimed that EastEnders had shown “guts and determination” even as far back as 20 years ago when it screened the gay kiss between his character Colin and boyfriend Barry.