Shannon family in fury over ‘sick’ BBC drama
THE BBC was at the centre of a furious backlash over its Shannon Matthews drama last night, as it was forced to deny that it breached its own editorial guidelines.
Jeff Pope, executive producer of the programme, The Moorside, admitted that it had not asked Shannon for her input or been in touch with some of her family members.
Shannon’s grandparents led the outcry, saying they thought it was a ‘ disgrace’ to dramatise the faked kidnap of Shannon, who is now 18 and living under a new name.
June and Gordon Matthews said: ‘Shannon deserves to live her life in peace. She deserves to be left alone. What happened to her was a trauma, a tragedy. It is sick and disgusting that it is being turned into a TV show.’
The drama, starring Sheridan Smith as family friend Julie Bushby, aired on Tuesday. It centred on the hunt for Shannon, who was nine when she disappeared from the Moorside estate in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, in February 2008.
In what became a cause celebre, she was missing for more than three weeks until it emerged that Shannon’s mother Karen Matthews had
‘Intrusive titillation’
staged the kidnap with her boyfriend Michael Donovan in order to raise money from publicity. The BBC One programme was made by ITV Studios and watched by 7.2million viewers.
Karen Matthews’ cousin, Susan Howgate, said that the controversial drama would ‘bring everything back’ and cause unnecessary pain.
‘Family members will get grief like they have done in the past. I’ve had a lot of trouble, and same with my auntie. People keep saying stuff to her still,’ she told ITV’s Good Morning Britain.
Her anger was shared by Kate and Gerry McCann, whose daughter Madeleine went missing nearly ten years ago. They accused the BBC of ‘poor taste’ and said it was an ‘appalling’ and ‘insensitive’ decision to air The Moorside.
The backlash intensified after Mr Pope told Radio 4’s Front Row that the BBC had not discussed the drama with Shannon’s close family. ‘We have not spoken to them [the grandparents]. It’s not based on any conversation with us. Nor on any knowledge on their part of what we are trying to do,’ he said.
Asked whether he had spoken to the victim, he added: ‘It isn’t about Shannon. You are completely wrong, it is not about Shannon. There are less than ten seconds about Shannon.
‘It is about the abduction of Shannon Matthews. OK so if we spoke to Shannon Matthews, what is it you would want us to ask her if you were in my position?’
The BBC took a different approach when it came to nonfamily members involved in the search – even paying some for their help with making the drama.
A spokesman said: ‘ITV Studios paid some contributors small fees to recompense them for their time, and for time taken off work.’
Last night, the BBC was accused of riding roughshod over its guidelines for producers, which state: ‘Whenever appropriate, and where their role is significant, real people portrayed in a drama or their surviving near relatives should be notified in advance and, where possible, their co-operation secured.’
However the BBC tried to insist that it had not broken the rules.
The broadcaster said it had ‘notified’ Shannon ‘via the professionals who are responsible for her care’ many months before the drama aired. It also said it had ‘attempted’ to notify Karen Matthews, via letters to her parents and solicitor.
A BBC spokesman said: ‘The Moorside fully met the BBC’s edi- torial guidelines.’ But MPs savaged the Corporation’s decision.
Tory Sir Bill Cash said: ‘This is wholly insensitive. It is a gross invasion of [Shannon’s] legitimate expectation that becoming anonymous would mean that she would be untroubled by deliberately provoked agitation. It really is a matter on which the BBC Trust [or] Ofcom should be warding off this kind of intrusive titillation. The fact that she is just 18 looks as though they’ve chosen to cause as much trouble as they can.’
Tory John Whittingdale, a former culture secretary, said: ‘You are dealing with real-life events and she is likely to be raw and very sensitive. It’s common sense to talk to her.’
Liberal Democrat John Hemming said: ‘The BBC are supposed to be a public service broadcaster, but I am not clear what service it is to the public to go digging up a story of the maltreatment of a child who is still very young, without even observing their guidelines and talking to her first. I always thought that was a very odd programme for the BBC to produce. It’s obviously voyeuristic.’
Helen Lewington, director of Mediawatch-UK, said: ‘It’s surely questionable whether recounting the real-life events surrounding the abduction of nine-year-old Shannon Matthews in a TV drama is justified, given how recently they occurred, and the tragic human suffering that is now being re-lived in the name of entertainment.’