A couple of months ago, I gave the annual Royal Television Society lecture for the BBC, which looked at both portrayals of working-class communities and people living in poverty. The full text of it is online here. It’s obviously relevant to the current furore over Benefits Street, but there’s a particular point I want to rebut.
Some of the response to those wanting a more balanced portrayal - rather than one which fuels the demonisation of the poorest, convenient of course at a time of severe cuts to the welfare state - is that we want to turn people in poverty into saints, to ignore difficult and challenging problems, and so on.
In response to this criticism, I just want to quote the final part of the lecture here:
"Representations of working class life should be many and various. Television must be more honest about the portrayal of working people.
I’m not arguing that there aren’t bad, difficult things in working class life, but don’t demonise, report accurately and don’t make poverty porn.
There are some good programmes out there but we need to remind ourselves constantly of the potential pitfalls and the dishonesty of cynical agendas.
So what is the solution?
