Fighting for the future

 

This week has seen much media coverage of the news that three senior Labour politicians held leading positions in a human rights group that backed the notorious Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE).

PIE was formed in 1974 and campaigned for "children's sexuality". It wanted the government to axe or lower the age of consent and it offered support to adults "in legal difficulties concerning sexual acts with consenting 'under age' partners". The real aim was to normalise sex with children.   Many of this week’s revelations are not new but they do reflect the shock that we feel about how a group with "paedophile" in its name could operate so openly for a decade.

Columnist Matthew Parris said “if there was anything with the word 'liberation' in the name you were automatically in favour of it if you were young and cool in the 1970s. It seemed like PIE had slipped through the net”

At the time there was a battle raging over free speech and PIE were able to take advantage of this.  Journalist Polly Toynbee wrote of her "sinking feeling that in another five years or so, their aims would eventually be incorporated into the general liberal credo, and we would all find them acceptable".

Fortunately there were those who were willing to fight for the rights of children including The National Viewers and Listeners Association (as Mediawatch-UK was then known).  Charles Oxley, Vice President of NVALA, successfully infiltrated PIE and was able to provide police with a dossier on the group and its membership which played a crucial part in the police prosecution of its members and the disbanding of the group.

NVALA drafted proposed new legislation to make membership of any organisation which supported, encouraged, condoned or enticed adults to have sexual relationships with children illegal and to make the production and distribution of material advocating such relationships against the law.  In her book Mightier Than The Sword Mary Whitehouse wrote about standing outside the committee room in which the ballot for Private Members Bills took place to make sure successful MPs were given sight of the draft legislation and urged to take it forward.

Mary Whitehouse wrote: “As I see it there is a choice of freedoms here: either the freedom of vicious perverts to propagate their perversions or the freedom of children.”

Reading these words in 2014 it is impossible not draw parallels with our fight to protect children online today.  The ‘adult industry’ launched the Free Speech Coalition with the aim of “greater public tolerance of freedom of sexual speech” and it currently engages in lobbying, PR and litigation with to this end.  We have this group to thank for legislation in the US which removed the prohibition on depictions that appeared to be of a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct and opened the door to a tsunami of material known as ‘barely legal’ which features computer generated images of children or performers over the age of 18 childified to look much younger

Protecting children from pornography is much more than a free speech issue.  As more and more emerged about the effects of pornography on those who consume it is an issue of public health and we must ensure that we do not allow this fact to be clouded.

Writing in The Times the year before PIE was disbanded philosopher Roger Scruton stated his view that freedom of speech had to be sacrificed when it came to such groups. He wrote: "Paedophiles must be prevented from 'coming out'. Every attempt to display their vice as a legitimate 'alternative' to conventional morality must be, not refuted, but silenced."

It is to be hoped that we will be able to look back on our present campaigns from the future and wonder how we, as a society, ever accepted the universal availability of online pornography without protection and be thankful that the work which are undertaking today has strengthened future generations.

Playing it safe

Much has been written about the merits or otherwise of playing video games – particularly those of a violent nature.  Critics’ claim that games are addictive and can foster an obsession with killing and death whilst supporters argue that they improve visual, coordination and reasoning skills and can provide a safe outlet for aggression.

Some new research from Canada has recently been published which considers the link between the types of video games teens play, how long they play them, and their levels of moral reasoning; their ability to take the perspective of others into account.

Researchers surveyed 13 and 14 year olds of both genders; they were questioned about their gaming habits and patterns and were assessed to gauge their stage of moral development using an established scale.

Previous studies have suggested that a person's moral judgement goes through four phases as they grow from childhood and enter adulthood.  By the age of 13 or 14 young people should be entering the third stage, and be able to empathise with others and take their perspective into account.

However this latest study found that this stage appeared to be delayed in teenagers who regularly played violent video games.  Hours spent playing violent games was effectively stunting teenagers’ emotional growth.  Interestingly, there was no correlation between the amount of time adolescents reported playing non-violent video games and their moral reasoning levels.

Researcher Mirjana Bajovic said: 'Exposure to violence in video games may influence the development of moral reasoning because violence is not only presented as acceptable but is also justified and rewarded.  Spending too much time within the virtual world of violence may prevent [gamers] from getting involved in different positive social experiences in real life, and in developing a positive sense of what is right and wrong.'

Debates on violent video games often get stuck at ‘do they cause violent crime?’ but as this study shows, there are other more subtle outcomes which are also of concern.

Narrow defeat in the Lords: The Fight goes on

Thank you for taking the time last weekend to use our campaign website, Safeonline.org.uk to contact a peer and encourage them to support Baroness Howe’s amendment to the government’s Children and Families Bill.  Lady Howe’s amendment required all ISPs and mobile phone operators to provide their customers a service free of adult content unless they opted in to receive it and made provision for robust age verification to guard against abuse of the system.

So many of you responded that we estimate every peer received at least one email of encouragement.

Sadly the amendment was not carried with 118 peers voting for it with 153 voting against.

We always knew that an early vote would be crucial to the success of the amendment and unfortunately this was scuppered by two last minute developments.  Firstly, the Commons decided to send the Lobbying Bill back to the Lords, which lost a good hour and a half and secondly there was much debate on an extremely controversial sex education amendment which took a long time to debate.

In the event Lady Howe did not start speaking until 7.39 pm and the result of the vote came out one hour later.

A number of peers who know about these things tell me that, had the vote been earlier, the amendment would have been carried comfortably.  It is deeply frustrating that, at the end of the day this should come down to something as capricious as timing rather than the quality of arguments.

Although disappointing I feel that we should also take encouragement from the result.  In her summing up Lady Howe said:

“We have debated these issues on many occasions and need to come to some resolution. On that basis, I wish to test the opinion of the House.”

The closeness of the vote indeed shows the opinion of the House.  The peers who voted for the amendment included Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrats and cross-benchers.  Clearly this is an issue which transcends party boundaries and shows the strength of feeling on this issue.  The government will have noted this and are likely to be watching very closely.  As one expert told me this week ‘it would only take another Tesco [which Mediawatch-UK recently discovered was not filtering content on their mobile service despite tacit assurances it was] and they would have to legislate’.

Thank you once again for your support which, had timings been different, would have carried the day.  All is not yet over and I look forward to being able to write to you with the good news of statutory protection in the not too distant future.

Have your say: a real chance to see real change

Last year the Government announced that it had worked with Internet Service Providers to come up with a voluntary industry agreement to protect children online.  It was a great step forward but it can only be really effective if accompanied by robust age-verification for users which is sadly lacking from the industry’s own proposals. 

If we rely solely on a self-regulation we will have no long term security.  It may be that under intense political and media pressure today the industry will get its house in order, but where will we be in five, ten or twenty years’ time?  If it is true, as the Prime Minister has said, that ‘few things are more important than this,’ why is it that we have laws on myriad eventualities but nothing in relation to one of the most important areas currently affecting us and our children?

We believe that self-regulation is not a long term solution and that statutory backing is needed.  As you know, we have been supporting Baroness Howe’s Online Safety Bill, which had its second reading in the House of Lords at the end of last year.  The Bill, should it become law, would provide the statutory underpinning presently lacking.

However, Baroness Howe’s Bill is a private members bill and, although it received the overwhelming support of all the peers that attended its second reading, the passage of such bills is notoriously precarious unless they are allocated government time.

We are delighted to report that yesterday Baroness Howe put forward an amendment to the government’s Children and Families Bill with very similar clauses to her original Bill.  This is a wonderful opportunity to future-proof online child protection moving forward.

The Bill will be debated in the House of Lords on Tuesday 28th January.  We understand that the Labour Party will be supporting the amendment and, if the cross bench peers also supported it, there is a very good chance that it could become law.

If you agree that its time the law was used to protect children in the online environment as it is offline please email a cross bench peer and encourage them to attend The House on 28th January and support the Bill.

We have updated our campaign website, www.safeonline.org.uk, to enable you to do this quickly and easily. 

Time is of the essence but this is such a wonderful opportunity to have a real influence we hope you won’t want to miss it.

Fit for purpose?

This week I have spent quite a bit of time fielding calls from journalists; most of them want to talk about two news stories which broke this week.

The first is news that the British Board of Film Classification has announced that, following public consultation, they will be making changes to their classification guidelines.  The positive changes include a tightening up of the language permitted in U certificate films. Greater weight will be given to the impact of tone and atmosphere in films issued with parental guidance (PG) and suitable for 12-year-olds and over (12A) certificates.  That is, regulators will take into account the impact of what the viewer thinks they have seen as well as what they have actually seen.

After asking the public, the BBFC decided that there will be more flexibility for strong language in films given a 15 certificate.  The BBFC’s accompanying report stated that there had been a softening of attitudes toward the most offensive words “especially among younger respondents” which begs the question has offensive language been normalised because it has become so ubiquitous?  The report stated that “by aged 15, most parents argued that it was ‘game over’ and they could no longer control their child’s viewing. Film classification was fairly low on the list of things to worry about regarding their child”.  How very sad!  With childhood being assaulted on so many fronts it is hard to protect young adults but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try.

The report also revealed that sexualised content in some music videos and ease of accessibility to online pornography was also a public worry.  How extraordinary then that this report should be released on the very day that such content made its way to the small screen.

The second story which many journalists have called me about this week is what took place in the Celebrity Big Brother house on Sunday evening.  Although always provocative this series has been particularly notable for graphic sexual content and on Sunday it reached a new low. 

The contestants were set the task of producing an 18 rated broadcast.  Housemates were provided with latex outfits and props reminiscent of a pornographic film and plied with alcohol to remove any inhibitions.  What ensued, in the words of one of the housemates, was ‘crudity and filth’.

The broadcast included simulated sexual acts and pole dancing with overtones of prostitution.  It is worth noting that in our society pole dancing is confined to licensed establishments operating adult only viewing, something which cannot be said to apply to Channel 5 at 9pm on a Sunday evening.  The end result was footage with the tone and spirit of a pornographic film.

We have written to Ofcom and asked them to investigate, setting out why we believe this programme to be in breach of the Broadcasting Code.  We have pointed out that extra care should have be taken because its 9pm slot, coupled with the large amount publicity it receives, makes it very likely to be viewed by a young audience.

We are also concerned that this extreme sexual material is easily available to children via Channel 5’s on-demand service.  These broadcasts have attracted much media attention and it likely that children’s interest will be piqued as a result.  All that stands between them and such content is a tick box confirming that the viewer is over 16.  This is not enough protection and, although a parental control service is available, to our knowledge it has never been advertised on screen so parents are only likely to know about it if they have accessed such a programme themselves.  This means that in practice this broadcast is easily accessible to the majority of children.

We have also written to the on-demand regulator, ATVOD, and asked them what can be done to protect children from such material.  ATVOD have done some great work in targeting websites offering pornographic content without robust age verification and although in the past they have not considered the sites of broadcasters to be hosting material which might ‘seriously mentally, physically or morally’ harm a child broadcasts like this show that this is an argument which is wearing pretty thin.  

If you would like to have your say about this (or any other) broadcast you can do this via the regulators’ website Parentport.  So far Ofcom have received nearly 400 complaints about Celebrity Big Brother and I’m hoping that they will investigate and deal with the programme accordingly.   

Let 2014 be the year in which Ofcom finally shows its teeth.

Vivienne Pattison

Director

Looking forward into 2014

Looking back at 2013 I think we can be very proud of what has been achieved and I’d like to thank you very much for your continued support which stimulated such positive change.

In July the Prime Minister announced in a landmark speech that every household in the UK is to have pornography filtered by their internet provider as a default unless they choose to opt-in to receive it.  This is a hugely encouraging development but we remain convinced that the best approach to ensure these pledges are actually delivered on is by changing the law.  This is why we are continuing to work in support of Baroness Howe’s Online Safety Bill (which recently had its second reading with overwhelming support) which would make this a reality.

Also this summer, as a result of pressure from the public and organisations including Mediawatch, the Co-op took the brave decision to no longer stock publications with sexually provocative covers unless they were supplied in modesty bags by their publishers.  The store admitted it would lose money as a result of the move but it decided to put its customers’ concerns before profit.

2014 will be landmark year for Mediawatch-UK.  It will be 50 years since Mary Whitehouse issued her call to arms at Birmingham Town hall in 1964 and we will be marking the occasion with a series of initiatives.  As you can see we are adopting a new logo for our anniversary year which we hope will remind people of our longevity and the continued support for our campaign.

Beginning on 1^st January we will be tweeting a quote from Mary Whitehouse’s writing every other day.  It is ironic that much of what we know about her views has come to us filtered by the media itself. This will be an opportunity to hear Mary Whitehouse in her own words taken from the books she wrote during her lifetime.  I think many people will find it quite surprising.

You can follow the initiative on Twitter - @MrsMWhitehouse and Facebook - www.facebook.com/MrsMaryWhitehouse and we will also be updating our dedicated website – www.marywhitehouse.com – with the quotes.  If you are not a Twitter or Facebook user you can subscribe on the website and you’ll receive an email every time a new quote is added.

We hope that you have a Happy Christmas and a Peaceful New Year.  

Vivienne Pattison

Director

Business needs to take its responsibilities seriously

This week it emerged that pornographic channels were available for viewing on televisions at Birmingham Children’s Hospital.  The televisions were showing Freeview Channels including the adult rated Babestation.  The situation only came to light when a father who had spent the night on a ward with his sick child found what was available and complained to the hospital.

The hospital swiftly blocked the channels when alerted to their availability and expressed their thanks to the family who discovered the problem.

Earlier this year we found a similar situation existed in Youth Hostels across the country with pornographic material freely available on television in bedrooms and public areas.  When we pointed this out the Youth Hostel Association thanked us for alerting them and acted quickly to block these channels but, once again, it took a concerned member of the public to raise the alarm before the channels were removed.

As we reported last week, it was our research which found that Tesco had misled the Prime Minister by failing to set filters on their mobile phones and thereby making pornography freely available to all their customers.  Baroness Howe drew heavily on our research when she broke this news in the House of Lords.

The Minister thanked us for bringing the situation to light and sought assurances from Tesco Mobile that situation would be rectified.

It is shameful that these issues only came light as a result of Mediawatch and members of the public sounding the alarm.  It should not be up to us or consumers to blow the whistle on breaches like this.  Why is there no ‘official’ body testing the veracity of statements that companies make.  There is clearly an urgent need for such a safeguard.

These three instances illustrate just how important it is for us all to highlight concerns when we find such breaches.  If you come across such egregious violations please do let us know so that we can take them up on your behalf.

Baroness Howe’s revelations led to considerable media interest to which Tesco responded with a statement that they ‘currently direct our customers to our free parental controls service which provides robust content management and this service can be switched on at any time’.  This is quite extraordinary because this is not what happened to our tester when we conducted our research.

At the point of purchase she asked for all adult content to be removed from internet access on all the phones. The salesman agreed and proceeded with the sale.  After discovering that by typing ‘porn’ into the mobile browser gave access to unfiltered content she contacted Customer Services at Tesco Mobile and was initially told that they would ‘set the block’ and, when a subsequent test revealed that pornography was still available on the browser, she was told that a block was in place but it wasn’t very good and Tesco had no plans to make their system more robust.

This happened in October 2013 so, to test whether or not any changes had been made, our tester purchased a further contract phone from Tesco on 29^th November.  At point of purchase she was assured that all porn would be blocked but, on testing, it was found that this was not the case. 

Interestingly, when one of our number was talking to the Minister following the House of Lords debate he seemed to think that Tesco did not realise that filters were not on and that the whole thing was an accident which is quite extraordinary.  We have passed on details of our research to disabuse him of this notion. 

We will continue to press for legislation to back up voluntary industry agreements and to put robust age verification processes in place.  It is clear that these measures are urgently needed so that big business takes its responsibility to children seriously.