Nov 13, 2007Quickie Link: Beeb Misrepresenting Real Britain
By vanrozenheim
(UK) - 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 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”.
