Louis Theroux says the BBC is increasingly reluctant to cover morally complex topics because the broadcaster is too worried about “avoiding offence”.
The documentary maker said the national broadcaster had been damaged by endless criticism from its opponents, making him concerned it was playing it safe: “From working so many years at the BBC, and still making programmes for the BBC, I see all too well the no-win situation it often finds itself in. Trying to anticipate the latest volleys of criticisms. Stampeded by this or that interest group. Avoiding offence.
“Often the criticisms come from its own former employees, writing for privately owned newspapers whose proprietors would be all too happy to see their competition eliminated. And so there is an urge to lay low, to play it safe, to avoid the difficult subjects.”
Theroux, who made his name interviewing extremists and seeking out unusual stories, made the comments while delivering the annual James MacTaggart Memorial lecture at the Edinburgh television festival.
In a speech titled The Risk of Not Taking Risks he said he was concerned by the wider societal pressure for media companies to “no-platform” people with certain views: “I share the urge to switch off all the negativity. To turn one’s attention elsewhere. To not feed the trolls. To never go anywhere near the trolls. I understand the need to consider people’s wellbeing. To think through all the possible prejudices that may be contained in programmes. The impact of jokes and unconscious bias. All of the multiple ways in which a TV show can do harm.
“But it’s also true that there is a big difference between platforming and doing challenging journalism about controversial subjects. There is a strange new world out there that is growing stranger by the day. It’s our job to understand it, and for people like me that means going out to make programmes about it.”
He said he had struggled to find a US network that would air his documentary about the white nationalist internet personality Nick Fuentes, because they “didn’t quite trust the audience to draw the right conclusions from seeing antisemitism and racism expressed on television”. Theroux argued this attempt at no-platforming was preposterous, since Fuentes was already reaching a large audience directly through his YouTube channel.
The documentary maker said some of his more “dark and troubling” ideas for films were still struggling to get made, such as a documentary about the English conspiracy theorist David Icke, and a series about Islamic State’s media operation.
Theroux has a long association with the BBC, dating back to his early work in the 1990s on TV Nation and his Weird Weekends series interviewing neo-Nazis and religious cult leaders. But in recent years he has formed his own television production company and stopped his hit BBC podcast in favour of a deal with Spotify.
He said he remained incredibly grateful for the opportunities and freedom the BBC had offered him throughout his career: “It’s the nature of actuality-led documentaries that you don’t know exactly what you’re going to get. There’s a leap of faith involved. The BBC took that leap with me many times. I’d like to thank the BBC for everything they allowed me to do. It’s hard to imagine having a similar arrangement anywhere else in the world.
“Given all of that, I broach the next point hesitantly and gingerly. Lately, there have been changes in the broader culture. We are, I’m happy to say, more thoughtful about representation, about who gets to tell what story, about power and privilege, about the need not to wantonly give offence. I am fully signed up to that agenda.
“But I wonder if there is something else going on as well. That the very laudable aims of not giving offence have created an atmosphere of anxiety that sometimes leads to less confident, less morally complex film-making.
“And that the precepts of sensitivity have come into conflict with the words inscribed into the walls of New Broadcasting House, attributed to George Orwell: ‘If Liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.’ And that as a result, programmes about extremists and sex workers and paedophiles might be harder to get commissioned.”
Theroux, who made two films about Jimmy Savile, said it had been “fascinating and a little dispiriting but maybe not that surprising” to see how the paedophile presenter’s crimes had been used by the far right as “a stick to beat the BBC” with. “In the fever swamps of the internet, Jimmy Savile has become a meme. A convenient and easy shorthand to discredit and besmirch the BBC and anyone who works there,” he said.
But he said programme makers needed to maintain nuance when reporting on Savile and other subjects of moral outrages: “It isn’t brave and risky to be inflammatory. What is brave is to not get swept along. To transcend an overly simplistic understanding of the ecology of victims and perpetrators. Not to jump to conclusions, not to cast blame too broadly, not to pander to prejudice, to resist the easy wins of playing to an angry crowd.
“The risk if we don’t do that is even greater. We become no better than the trolls on social media and render ourselves irrelevant.”
