Benefits Street

This essay is about a TV show that aired in 2014 called Benefits Street. It is a documentary about people who live in Britain and they live off benefits. The regulator for this Case study is OFCOM and it was on broadcast TV. The programme was aired after the watershed, so children couldn’t watch it, OFCOM had received 1,800 complaints after it aired.

A few social and political factors of this Case Study is that the show has crime and drugs, in one episode there was a man who was teaching the viewers how to shoplift. He was explaining how to dodge security cameras and take off security tags without doing any damage to the items. Also there as example of class divide because the participants in the show are also known as ‘Underclass’ or ‘Poor people’. The people in the show are being marginalised as they are treated insignificant because they don’t have jobs and they don’t do anything to contribute to society.

One debate this show brought up was that children under 18 were unprotected after the show aired and because of this they didn’t go to school and the adults didn’t leave their houses. So the school had to come and pick them up to ensure their safety, the community school then demanded that Channel 4 write them an apology for this but Channel said they hadn’t received a request for an apology. Also the public took to twitter to express their anger at the show, there were loads of death threats for example people posted “#benefitsstreet is annoying me massively. Go down with a gun and kill them.” The death threats were noticed eventually and a police investigation was launched.

Even though the public had complained about the show, OFCOM didn’t do anything about it, they go with the Anti-Discrimination act but class discrimination isn’t part of the protected discriminations so they didn’t feel the need to follow up the complaints. Some people were even tricked into taking part in the show which is unfair to them because they didn’t know what was happening.

An effect theory that could apply to this case study is the scape goat theory because the public expressed that they blame the people on benefits for the reason why the government were going to cut benefits. Also hegemony because we watch this show and have the dominant idea that because they don’t work then that it’s a bad thing. There is also Moral panic as well through twitter because it’s unregulated the public can speak freely and spread fear through their own words.

To conclude, I would use this case study because in this case study we see that OFCOM look as though they don’t really care about the fact that there is discrimination against class and they allowed the show to continue air anyway even though there were major issues in it. Also they didn’t protect children and vulnerable adults like they said they would.