Telly production biz films maternity clinic, doesn't tell patients, gets fined £120,000 A TV production company has been fined £120,000 after it set up cameras in a maternity clinic for a documentary on stillbirths, but tragically didn't get patients' advance permission for filming. True Visions Productions (TVP) was working on a Channel 4 documentary at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge, where positioned …
Not just the hospital but who at TVP? I can accept that perhaps this might (with a very large grain of sand) be something worth doing but it really does smell like a "shock reality" thing searching for ratings and viewers than an informational documentary. But profit and competition for ratings rule in TVland. The fine is a pittance and not enough.
Not just TVP but also the broadcaster involved. FTA: "True Visions Productions (TVP) was working on a Channel 4 documentary..." If Channel 4 were involved then TVP would have had some contractual relationship with the broadcaster. That may have been TVP approaching C4 with their own idea and C4 committing to pay for and broadcast the finished prog, and/or Channel 4 came up with their own idea and commissioned TVP to make it for them (Channel 4 being a commissioning only broadcaster, with no in house production facilities). You may argue TVP was at "the coal face" and made their own decisions about how to capture the footage they wanted to inform the documentary, but there ought to have been some oversight by the broadcaster, and thus some joint responsibility for how the production company conducted themselves on the broadcaster's behalf.
An aside, the whole Sachsgate thing happened in part because BBC Radio 2 had wholly inadequate controls/oversight over the independent production house making Russell Brand's show. It didn't help that Brand owned the production company which meant that when a producer told him no, he fired them and hired a new producer that would say yes, and this should have encouraged greater external oversight from the Beeb due to the likely absent internal controls.
More to the point who trousered the bund as NHS rules on donations mean that officially its pretty much impossible for a given unit to receive a donation.
My Mother just retired as a dialysis nurse given that this is mostly a end of life support service, they frequently got added to wills ect but the money all goes into a central pot and then usually got spent on art to deteriorate the directors office main hospital in the catchment area.
Her advice is if you want to say thank you to a unit that has helped you or your loved ones is to send things like tins of biscuits that wont be nicked by the central office directly to the address of the ward.
The intentions were obviously good but someone(s) in the hospital seems to think that hospitals are run for the benefit of the staff,not the patients - an observation not mine but made by a consultant called in to look at how the NHS was managed. (Since then, as an end user, things have got better.)
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So that's actually quite a substantial fine. If it was post-GDPR, I think sticking an extra couple of zeros on the end would be about right. (TV production companies don't have turnovers over 500 M€ so the max fine would be 20 M€; it *could* have been worse - so don't make the fine actually maximum.)
Post GDPR you would fine the production company that was created for just this show, which has no money but rents all the equipment from another production company which happens to be at the same address.
We rented outside our office to a major Holywood movie company once - you need some fast accounting footwork to get the bill in while the 'production company' still exists.
"You know, people may get upset if we ask them to film them while they're having a stillbirth delivery."
"Really? Okay, then don't ask."
Are these guys stupid? I mean, if they thought this would be OK, they are psychopaths. If they thought this wasn't OK, but they could get away with it, then they are evil AND stupid - because this is stuff that's meant to go on bloody TV, how are you supposed not to get found out?
If this sort of intrusion into clinical spaces was to be done for research purposes, the team would have to go through rigorous procedures, including getting approval from a properly constituted Research Ethics Committee. To get approval, things like the information given to potential participants, and what would happen if there was a refusal would be scrutinised closely. It disgusts me that, because it is a media operation, rather than a research one, no-one thought about the ethics implications - but then, that seems to be the default for doctors and hospital managers these days.
On reading, I thought that "tie a carrier bag over it" was a coarse remark about unsatisfactory improvised contraception. So maybe it actually was, at first, then they decided there was no other way to provide "privacy"??? (presumably the camera can still hear you though)
I suppose that the carrier-bag option has the advantage that you can leave the camera itself almost entirely alone, so you have a good defense against any claims of "you damaged the camera when you..."
However, it does nothing much to hinder any audio recording if the cameras also have active microphones.
Seriously, making a documentary on Stillbirths and not getting permission or even speaking with the patients beforehand on what they were doing and why. Talk about a bunch of uncaring pricks
The fine doesn't go far enough.My first thought that everyone in that production company should made to do a "Cersei walk of shame".
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