ABSTRACT
The world of television news enacts tight editorial controls, controls that do not normally permit generous conditions of access to ordinary or lay voices and viewpoints. Of course, as we shall see, ‘ordinary voices’ are routinely accessed into TV news items but rarely are they granted an opportunity to develop their arguments or points of view at length, much less directly confront and challenge political and expert authorities. The following, then, represents a rare moment in the news mediation of environmental risks and, for that matter, TV news broadcasts more generally. In the excerpt below from BBC2’s Newsnight programme, Frances Hall (the mother of Peter Hall, one of the first victims to die from Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, the human equivalent of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy) is ceded a degree of editorial control and narrates her own film report before participating in a live studio debate.
Our son Peter was ill for more than a year. During that time I wrote to request that someone from the government would come and sit with me at his bedside and see what this devastating illness was doing to our strong, handsome young man. No one came…. Given the mounting evidence of a possible link between BSE and CJD can anyone offer me a logical explanation of how my son contracted this disease other than by eating BSE infected meat? Since Peter died I’ve taken a job in a local café; I see people confused about what’s safe to eat. We’ve been told consistently that British beef is safe and that the most infected parts have been removed, but even if the red meat carries no infection we still see evidence of incorrectly butchered cattle with possibly infected parts still attached entering the human food chain, and offal being recycled into animal feed. Surely as Health Secretary, Stephen Dorrell, your only duty is to the nation’s health? Can you assure me that no one else will be exposed to the dangers of BSE? Are precautions being enforced and will this really protect the public? Mr Dorrell I want you to watch the pictures of my son growing up, do they look much different to the pictures you have of your children? Does Peter show any signs of the tragically short span that he would have? I hold the government responsible for his death and their total incompetence and mismanagement of a manmade disease.… Will the government now accept that the scientific advice it chose to follow, namely, that there was no conceivable risk from eating British beef, was wrong? Are the experts still the same? Is the government still being selective on the advice that it takes on behalf of the nation or is it now willing to err on the side of caution? These past months have been, and continue to be, a living nightmare for my family. We have been unable to come to terms with Peter’s death because we know that if BSE had been treated with sufficient caution he and many others would not have suffered this terrible illness.
(BBC2 Newsnight 20 June 1996)