BBC promises clean-up

By CRISTINA ODONE As HIS parting shot, BBC Chairman Marmaduke Hussey has pledged new guidelines to clean up "Auntie's act.
Amid growing concern about standards of taste and decency, BBC governors are drawing up rules that would ban blasphemy, and curb violence and obscenities so that they would be shown after the 9pm watershed.
The revision of the taste and decency section of the producers' guidelines was first discussed at a governors' seminar last November. Among the 125 delegates to the "Taste and Decency" seminar were religious leaders, civil servants, programme makers and academics. In a letter to these participants, Marmaduke Hussey, who will retire on Sunday after ten years as Chairman of the BBC, spoke of his commitment to the new stricter guidelines, which will be finalised by June.
The regulations will "emphasise the concept of respect as a key issue in determining where the boundaries should lie in issues of taste, sex and language". He also said that the guidelines will "stress the need for greater care to be taken about the use of bad language and especially religious language".
Jim McDonnell, Director of the Catholic Communications Centre said he welcomed the "new guide
lines, which show that Marmaduke Hussey wants to take people's concerns seriously." But, he told the Catholic Herald, "the BBC ought to publicise these guidelines so that people know what they say. The more the public knows about the detail of what is in the guidelines the more they can respond: only in this way will more people engage in the debate."
The existing BBC guidelines are three years old, but governors felt they did not take into account the corporation's new charter and agreement, expected to come into force on 1 May.
The new charter gives the governors a new defined regulatory role.