BBC Trust

This outreach event took place at Glyndŵr University, Wrexham, with around 25 people present.

A particular draw for the children was a session with a prosthetics expert who has worked on programmes such as Doctor Who. He helped them to create special effects suitable for halloween!

News

BBC News was trusted for being unbiased. Guests used the BBC News channel to stay up to date on international events like the uprising in Libya. However some participants felt there should be more coverage of north Wales. 'You rarely hear anything about Wrexham'.

In relation to the news regarding the very recent evictions of gypsies and travellers from the Dale Farm site, participants felt that only the negative aspects had been portrayed. The fact that it would have been relatively simple to solve a lot of the issues between locals and travellers had not been covered. 'If travellers pull in they should supply toilets and rubbish bags instead of wasting money cleaning up after them'.

During the TV News and newspaper coverage of the Dale Farm evictions a woman had been portrayed as being a member of the travelling community when in fact she was considered by them to be a settled person. 'She was dressed far too rough to be a traveller, she was more like one of those new age hippies, and they have a totally different way of life.' The travellers did not want to be associated with hippies and felt the media should distinguish between different travelling communities.

One lady did not ever watch the news. 'It is depressing. TV is always bad news. There is never a happy or a good story'. They considered that the perception of the population at large of most minority communities was formed by news coverage.

TV

Shows popular with participants included East Enders, Coronation Street, the BBC News Channel and cookery programmes like Master Chef. While East Enders was a popular show, they did not consider that it exhibited good moral values to the younger generation. It was felt this and similar shows should be given 'Parental Guidance' ratings. They felt the watershed should begin a bit later.

An older gentlemen despite not watching a great deal of television did like watching cowboy films. He liked old fashioned films and anything horse related would always prove a big hit.

There was no specific channel loyalty amongst participants but when questioned about anything which would lead to them switching off the TV, one participant said, 'ITV, I can't stand that Katie Price or Jordan woman'.

Guests were happy with the BBC's educational content and their children watched CBeebies. The children were fans of Doctor Who.

They felt a lot of shows only satisfied younger viewers and that the classics were being side-lined at Christmas time with more contemporary child pleasing cartoon dramas. There was a strong feeling among a significant proportion of participants that 'classics' were best, such as Laurel and Hardy. Real and true life documentaries were also popular. They preferred non-fiction in general to fiction, hence there were not many fans of sci-fi programmes (except younger participants).

Comments about the Channel 4 programme My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding included one by a participant who said 'There was a huge amount of awareness raising, people seemed to be really interested and enjoy it.' Participants felt it had brought a more positive view of the travelling community to the public, and felt there should be more programmes about travellers but that they should be less sensationalist -'They should show us in our ordinary lives - nothing extra'. It was felt there had been far too many 'settled extras' featured in the show and not enough travellers. They acknowledged that the show had not been good for everyone. They personally knew the baker on the show - Jill - who had 'almost lost her business over all that wedding stuff'.

Since that programme, there had been a surge in interest by broadcasters eager to 'do the gypsy thing'. The participants were generally happy to be filmed but they wanted prior warning, they 'did not want to have people just showing up and filming'.

There was disgust with the increased sexualisation of adverts. "They might be advertising a bar of chocolate and they are taking their clothes off!" The traveller guests considered themselves to have stricter moral values than the settled community.

Portrayal

Participants considered the travelling community to be under-represented in the media. 'Rarely do you hear anything about a traveller and if you did it always seems to be in a bad light'. The exception lately was the Dale Farm evictions.' They considered that travellers did not go out and defend themselves. During the Dale Farm evictions it had been mainly locals and idealists fighting for them - 'the travellers should have backed these people up. There were thirty five arrests and none of them was of travellers. When travellers are on the road they are told to get their own place, then they do (Dale Farm) they are told to get out'.

People believed the BBC could do more to give them a voice. They felt misunderstood as a minority group. 'The BBC should do a more down to earth programme on our culture. Take us as you find us. In those rare films about travellers you don't see the people on them engaging in real traveller activities'.

The participants said that travellers considered the media in general as very one sided and racist. 'If we go to a pub in Wrexham, we are not asked to leave politely, the police are called.' They felt the media did little to counteract the negative image.

'The more positive things the travellers do in the community the better'. All the participants were a fan of Paddy Dougherty who had been involved with My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding and had gone on to win one of the latest Big Brother contests. They felt he was doing positive things for the community.

Online and on-demand services

Most of the participants present did not use the online services much as many did not find it accessible, but they said the children were becoming a bit more internet savvy, and they had concerns about this.

They considered that the use of social media could become a problem. The children were supervised when using the internet at school and at home. Their lifestyles had changed and they were doing less travelling as the children were in school. They said that it was rare for them to go to gypsy fairs to socialise.

Radio

BBC Radio 1 was the preferred station and BBC Radio 4 was listened to occasionally for the plays. Radio Wales considered to be too Cardiff orientated although this was felt to be improving slightly. They found digital radio streamed via the television was sometimes unclear.

General

The BBC was considered a quality broadcaster - not least as it had no adverts. When they watched X Factor they felt that 'there is an advert after each song - it's ridiculous'.

They considered the license fee to be set at a reasonable amount 'especially as Sky is all repeats'.