Is the BBC institutionally stigmatising?
Written by Jim Armstrong
We recently complained to the BBC about an article that focused on the topic of substance use, mental health, organised crime and shoplifting.
Our complaint focused on a range of stigmatising language and tropes in the reporting on the BBC website and Radio 4 Today programme. Key to our concern was that one only person with lived experience of substance use was included in the piece and he was unfairly presented as representative of the majority people who shoplift. We felt this stereotyped both the participant and denied other people their own personal life experiences.
You can read the article here and make your own mind up:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/czdpvd41z7mo
To be fair to BBC they did provide a response to our complaint, but disappointingly the response was more dismissive than considered.
Whilst some aspects of the reporting are debateable, what was clear was that the BBC view the labelling people as ‘addicts’ and describing people as ‘clean’ is in line with their editorial guidelines because to quote from their response:
“The use of words such as “clean” and “addicts” in particular are colloquial and would be well-understood by our audience”
I suspect many UK media organisations would say the same as the BBC. The issue is that colloquial and well-understood language is often stigmatising. How can we make change to the language around drug use if the media echoes everyday language and everyday language echoes the media?
It was 8 years ago in 2017 when The Associated Press Style book, the guidelines for US journalists, provided updated guidance to instruct journalist to “avoid words like alcoholic, addict, user and abuser unless they are in quotations or names of organizations” and to “instead, choose phrasing like he was addicted, people with heroin addiction or he used drugs.”
You can read more about that update here
Use of the word “clean” to describe other people is common place across the BBC and wider UK media reporting and sadly they are correct that it is everyday language, but it is increasingly understood when used to describe others (as opposed to self-identification) as stigmatising.
This piece by journalist Katie Macbride from 2019 very clearly explains why:
https://www.healthline.com/health/addiction/stop-describing-sober-people-as-clean#1
The BBC is a beloved national institution, it’s amongst the most trustworthy news outlets in the world, but its editorial guidelines are out of date and personally I do not have confidence that the BBC has the cultural competence to report on matters related to substance use without causing harm.
Resources
For more resources related to this subject we recommend Adfam and SFADs ‘Reporting for Substance Media Toolkit’