BBC to broadcast another Taylor-made counterblaste to tobacco

Quote from Deborah Arnott, CEO of ASH, in a Radio Times feature to promote a documentary to be broadcast on Radio 4 tomorrow (Saturday):

“I don’t trust the tobacco industry. There’s evidence that they deceived and misled people about cigarettes for decades. IQOS is just as addictive as smoking.”

No surprises there. Deborah has never been a fan of the tobacco industry or heated tobacco.

The documentary, ‘Tobacco and Me’, is the work of journalist and broadcaster Peter Taylor whose career is best known for his programmes on Northern Ireland and smoking. According to Wikipedia:

His documentaries on smoking and health and the politics of tobacco include four for ITV in the 1970s: Dying for a Fag (ITV's This Week 1975); Licence to Kill; Ashes to Ashes (ITV's This Week 1976); and Death in the West: The Marlboro Story. In the 1980s he continued his investigations into the tobacco industry with BBC TV's Panorama programme: A Dying Industry (BBC 1980) and The Habit the Government Can’t Break (BBC 1985). He also published his book, Smoke Ring, The Politics of Tobacco in 1985.

In 2014 the BBC broadcast a further two-part documentary by Taylor called ‘Burning Issue: The Seduction of Smoking’.

I wrote a number of posts about it, partly because the programme was generating quite a bit of publicity and I had been invited to discuss it on several BBC radio stations.

My first post (‘The BBC’s burning desire to promote tobacco control’) included notes that had been circulated to local radio producers ahead of the programme being broadcast:

How fortuitous [I wrote] that a BBC documentary, broadcast two days before [World No Tobacco Day], should feature a leading tobacco control campaigner calling for the price of cigarettes to be raised to £20 a pack. Better still, the BBC is actively hawking John Britton's comment around its network of radio stations.

The first part of Taylor’s documentary was broadcast on BBC2 on May 29, 2014. After part two was broadcast a week later I summarised the documentary with a further post - ‘Burning desire for a balanced programme bound to end in disappointment’:

There wasn't a single comment from a healthy adult smoker explaining why they smoke or why they enjoy smoking despite the fact – and here I must declare an interest – that I suggested it to the producers several months ago.

Commenting on the publicity the programme had generated, I added:

You have to hand it to him [Taylor]. With a lot of help from the BBC he's been pretty good at promoting what is, at best, a fairly niche documentary.

The following day, referring to the man whose review persuaded David Cameron to introduce plain packaging of tobacco, I commented that ‘Burning Desire revealed Sir Cyril Chantler’s true colours’.

A few days after that I posted the viewing figures and concluded that ‘Anti-smoking propaganda is a TV turn-off’. The public, I commented, had voted with their remote controls.

Part one had 589k viewers, just 2.9% of the viewing public. Part two was even more of a turn off with only 541k viewers (2.8%).

No surprise then that Taylor’s latest tobacco-centred documentary has been relegated to a Saturday evening in the height of summer when many people are away on holiday.

I’ll listen to it, partly because the programme includes a ‘rare’ interview with Andre Calantzopoulos, executive chairman of Philip Morris International, who will explain PMI’s plan to create “a smoke-free world”.

So far so predictable. What would be a genuine surprise is an interview with someone defending the habit of smoking in the 21st century so a quick reminder of what happened in January 2014 when I was contacted by the producer of Taylor’s BBC2 documentary Burning Desire: The Seduction of Smoking.

As I noted here:

We spoke on the phone and I expressed the hope that over a two-hour documentary they would find at least a few minutes to feature people who like smoking.

I suggested they might conduct some interviews at a Forest event which I offered to organise for the purpose but I heard nothing more.

That was before the publication in December 2016 of The Pleasure of Smoking: The views of confirmed smokers, a study funded by Forest but conducted by the Centre for Substance Use Research.

Sadly it seems the views of adults who enjoy smoking, know the risks and still don’t want to quit are anathema to most journalists because they don’t fit the anti-smoking narrative.

If I’m wrong about ‘Tobacco and Me’ I’ll gladly post a correction but what are the chances?

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'Dying for a smoke?', a two-page feature by 'BBC veteran' Peter Taylor, can be found in the 13-19 August issue of Radio Times. As might be expected, Taylor makes no secret of his antipathy to smoking. However he also highlights the 'growing concern', that he says he shares, 'about the young becoming a new generation of nicotine addicts' through 'relatively cheap vaping devices'.

Comments

[Pat Nurse]

Yet another reason I gave up paying the BBC licence fee. I absolutely detest having to fund political propaganda on the BBC for those vested interests who also depend on my taxes for their salaries to exclude me further and whip up hatred and contempt against me and my fellow smoker.

The programme will preach to the converted smokerphobic but normal people won't be slightly interested - especially as many more who are fed up of being force fed propaganda on the BBC have also quit paying their licence fee for more impartial broadcasting on a whole host of other streaming services instead.

The BBC is so out of touch it has no idea why it is losing millions of viewers.