Week 2 Newsdesk: TV chiefs take joint stand on viewer trust

The heads of the four main public broadcasters have met earlier this week in a bid to regain the publics faith facing the viewer deception scandals. BBC director general Mark Thompson, ITV executive chairman Michael Grade, Channel 4 chief executive Andy Duncan and Five Chief Executive Jane Lighting met with Ofcom chief executive, Ed Richards in a seminar hosted by Ofcom chairman, David Currie, and BBC Trust chairman, Sir Michael Lyons. They are planning on creating a group that will uphold a cross-industry framework for best practice and ways to deal with issues raised with premium-rate services. They will work on developing industry wide training on ethical standards and best practice and have a common framework of principles to promote best practice. It will also clarify on contractual and compliance issues "to ensure that responsibilities are clearly expressed and audience interests are clearly protected". It’s good to see that they are addressing the issue in a practical way, by uniting and creating this group it seems they can ensure that the audiences are satisfied with programming which is important it’s no good to have an audience that doesn’t trust you.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2007/nov/29/tvfakery.television