Government Funded Security Force Shows On Corporate Broadcasters

This might drive the Biased BBC wingnuts crazy but it turns out ITV and SKY are the ones showing government funded TV shows about the work of Community officers and the Immigration Agency. Particularly for the Border & Immigration Agency who are not fit for the purpose, this is clearly propaganda and advertising-

A government-funded documentary about police community support officers is to be probed by media watchdog Ofcom, the Sunday Telegraph has reported. ITV1 show Beat: Life on the Street may have breached broadcasting codes by not making it clear it received £800,000 in Home Office funding, the paper said.

Ofcom rules say show sponsors must be clearly identified and not allowed to influence the content of programmes. A Home Office spokesman said he was confident Ofcom rules were followed.

Two series of Beat: Life on the Street have been broadcast on ITV1, while a third has reportedly been commissioned. Another programme called Border Force, about the work of the UK Border Agency, is due to be shown on Sky One later this month.

I am not surprised that Murdoch is showing ‘Border Force’ the most thuggish and racist arm of our security state is getting a shiny makeover for credulous idiots who no doubt will rail against ‘government spending their taxes’ on ‘scroungers and foreigners’ yet are in fact having that world-view fed & formed…by government funded shows. The Border & Immigration Agency has already been found in comprehensive reports-

Outsourcing Abuse: the use and misuse of state-sanctioned force during the detention and removal of asylum seekers (pdf).

The Border and Immigration Agency In Denial

The Border & Immigration Agency Is Not Fit For The Purpose

…to be utterly failing and to routinely ignore human rights and to abuse and conspire to deny legal redress to its victims. So the government and Murdoch’s Sky are working together to present a show about this completely shameful body and the politician’s and racists who support it, I mean a Fair and Balanced ™ portrait of this wonderful organisation. This is also a sign Murdoch intends to avoid the opprobrium the Fox brand receives by turning established Sky channels into Fox channels in all but name with the same cooperation with the establishment, a political and business partnership of aggressive media corporatism. Oh how we are learning from the Bush regime.