The Queen, speared fish, babies and bathwater

The BBC deserves the flack it's getting for mis-representing the Queen, and appropriately they've launched a process to unearth other potentially misleading programmes in advance of the BBC Trust meeting on Wednesday. The ripples are spreading elsewhere too: Channel Four today announced that Gordon Ramsey didn't actually spear fish on a recent trip, even though it seemed as though he did. And all this is against a backdrop of the phone-in scandals.

But in all the discussions of the need for authenticity, a seemingly obvious point is being overlooked. A broadcaster's relationship with its audience is based on trust. But it's also, quite properly, based on deception. 

This has always been the case in drama, where it's still fun watching Morse stroll through non-sequential locations in Oxford. But it's also true of factual genres like Natural History: David Attenborough has misled audiences for years, as he readily admits in this Daily Telegraph interview ("Only the Eagle Eyed Will Spot a Fake")

Do natural history programmes on television distort reality? Of course they do. Go for a walk in a tropical rainforest after watching a programme about one and you will be in no doubt of that. On television, all kinds of animals appeared continuously all over the place. In reality, you may be lucky to see a single bird or monkey.

But are there distortions that are more serious than that? Does it matter that a programme about the life of a polar bear, filmed for the most part in the Arctic, includes shots of a mother bear giving birth that were taken in a zoo – and that the commentary did not say so?

The polar bear example was real: it was filmed in a zoo in Belgium and edited into a programme about the arctic, and the it's been reported that the commentary deliberately misled the viewer. Similar debates are now real editorial dilemmas: should you show a rabbit outrunning an avalanche, when the rabbit has been digitally cut and pasted? Surely a rabbit has, at some stage, been in a similar predicament, so it's ok?

What about chat shows? If they're not live, they're edited to take out the gaffes and dull bits. Which makes the guests and presenters look more polished than they really are. And cookery shows? At least Blue Peter still says "here's one I made earlier" rather than pretending the perfect specimen was actually created by the preparation process you've just seen. Comedy? Do we really believe that Have I Got News For You isn't (largely) scripted? Concerts? They've been known to splice in audio from rehearsals when it's better than the final performance. Interviews? You know it's been edited when you see a presenter's nodding head. I expect there are more.

Television has all sorts of constraints as a medium. It therefore needs to deceive the viewer, and we willingly suspend our disbelief. The trick is drawing the line in the right place. Jumbling up sequences from (what is rumoured to be) an otherwise successful and cordial 4 hour photo shoot is clearly wrong. But does it really matter if Gordon Ramsey can't yet spear fish?

UPDATE: It's always reassuring when someone who knows more than you do takes a similar stance. In this case it's Richard Sambrook.