Issues in Factual Programming

Issues in Factual Programming:

Accuracy:

Accuracy is where you have to make sure you consistently know what your doing without making as few mistakes as possible so people will know they can trust your story. Also its about getting the correct story most accurately off eye witnesses and people involved in the story. Accuracy is one of the major attributes to factual programming. This is because time is of the essence so getting the development status out of the way to create the program itself.

Balance:

Balance is all about not making stories one sided so both sides of the story get balanced ideals by the viewers and corresponders. This is the make sure you can prevent biased views and pre judgements as much as possible. This is important to many story lines mainly because if you team with one side then they turn out to be the bad people it makes the viewer feel impartial and could even get annoyed to the point where they might even stop watching the show, so it is best to make every opinion equal to keep the watcher intrigued.

Impartiality:

Impartiality basically means not bringing in your own point of view whilst viewing both sides and opinions equally. This is to stop you from looking biased towards one side which could convince viewers to pair on your side which messes up the balance. impartiality is a bad thing to insert into a script because it can scale upwards to propaganda. Which if the program was a non-fictional documentary then inserting your own opinion into it can ruin the story line and facts behind the matter.

Bias:

Whilst filming it is important that you manage to get footage of every side and opinion on both sides to make it look less bias. This is to stop opinionating and siding unevenly. Biased views leave negative impacts on the program and its potential which could ruin the season/ set of the programmes set ahead.

Representation:

Representation is basically a word which sums up stereotyping and what everything is proclaimed to be. You have to make sure you dont stereotype at all during factual programming recording. If you stereotype during a program you could be faced with libel and ethical issues because of minor (or even major) cases of racism.

Privacy:

This is making sure everybody who is involved, Their privacy details remain with you and you do not sell them to third party companies and you have to keep all the forms which allow you to prove they give you permission forms to record them and involve them. This is to protect the personal information of the staff involved and to keep their identities safe.

Contact with the staff:

This is to make sure you have contact details with the people involved with the program to make sure everybody has the right equipment, times and dates, and details of parking and where the set is. Also it is good to keep in contact with all staff in case they become ill so you can get somebody else in to cover for that person who is ill.