Help on S.44 wanted….

Schoolgirls getting their 15 minutes of fame

Today I’m asking for help as I seem to have come up against something of an FoI brick wall.

Some of you may know that one of my recent pet projects concerns a show called #Educating Essex which was broadcast on Channel 4.

My problem with the show is at a time when print journalists (and I include myself in that dwindling tribe) are pilloried every day for our lack of ethics, sensitivity and soul those people producing fly-on-the-wall documentaries are, on occasions, getting away with much more.

The school is questions, Passmores in Harlow, Essex, have received an FoI request from me and an appeal has now gone to the Information Commissioner.

But I also complained about the exploitative nature of the show to Ofcom, who responded to my concerns to say that I need not worry myself. Here is its e-mail to me. Ofcom response.

I then thought it would be worth e-mailing an FoI to Ofcom to see if that would unearth something worthwhile. Can I please see all the corresspondence you hold that relates to investigations/queries/letters/e-mails between yourselves and the producers of #EducatingEssex, or yourselves and the school, in relation to the producers ensuring that the programme makers ensured that it did not breach the Ofcom Broadcasting guidelines?”

Unfortunately the response I received says that it cannot disclose anything to me as it is all covered by S.44 (prohibition on disclosure) by virtue of S.393(1) of the Communications Act. Ofcom Response to FOI

My question is, does anybody know how I might be able to rephrase my query with Ofcom to extract any information from them about the show?

S.44 is an exemption that I have managed to avoid in the past and such a sweeping use of it would surely make Ofcom virtually un-FoIable. Help.

What is the “public interest”?

Look into my eyes...look into my eyes

What is in the public interest has always been something of a thorny issue, especially when it comes to its use in Freedom of Information.

Personally I say thank the Lords (because apparently it was the House of Lords which decided to put the public interest test into FoI) that we have this weapon to set about the Qualified exemptions.

At the moment I’m involved in two disputes over information at opposite ends of the spectrum, but both hinge on the public interest test.

The first involves the Cabinet Office and its refusal to reveal documents written by our ex Prime Minister Tony Blair that were sent to George Bush.

These notes are central to the Iraq inquiry, whose head Sir John Chilcot asked to make the documents public, and when this was refused said the decision was “disappointing”.

The crux of these documents is whether they confirm the belief among many people that Tony Blair gave his word to the US President that British troops would join the war, before Parliament voted on the issue.

You can see the history of this request at WhatDoTheyKnow [here], and I’ve blogged about this in the past [here]. The information has been denied me on the basis S.35 (formulation of Government policy), S.36 (prejudice to the effective conduct of public affairs) and S.27 (international relations).

Were our troops sent to war just because Blair had “promised”? Could there be a clearer public interest? The case is now in the hands of the Information Commissioner.

Headmaster Vic Goddard flicks the Vs at his deputy head. Mr Chips he is not.

At the other end of the scale some of you may have been watching #EducatingEssex, a horrific fly-on-the-wall documentary about a school in Harlow.

I watch the show goggle-eyed at the way the show profiteers from seeing children taken into care, getting involved in scrapes with the police, getting pregnant, abusing teachers.

We are at the end of the series next week and ironically we have seen precious little educating of the Essex populous.

As a journalist I have to tread incredibly carefully if I do a story that identifies a child, particularly if it is something to do with their schooling – but this programme seems to have side-swerved the regulations in exchange for children grabbing their five minutes of fame. Responsible journalism? I think not.

So I wanted to know how much the documentary company paid the school for the privilege of being allowed into the school.

Surprise, surprise, they will not tell me. You can see the full response to my questions [Passmores1]. But they have applied the S.43 (commercial interests) exemption, and yes you’ve guessed it the public interest is not to disclose the amount.

Amazing that the public interest is in knowing which of his students are pregnant at 15, which of them get taken into care, which of them run away from home – but not how much the school got paid for selling off the pupils’ private lives for the amusement of viewers.

I’ve appealed this back to the headmaster Vic Goddard – a man who on the show seems to insist in empathising with errant schoolchildren by calling them “mate”. I suspect this case will run and run.

NOTE: Apologies for being away for so long.