Elton John and David Furnish: two men, a baby and a BBC balancing act?
It was a trending topic on Twitter for two days, written about on a number of blogs, and PinkNews.co.uk, the online newspaper for the gay community that I founded, has been all a-buzz.
The issue? The BBC deciding to ask a fundamentalist Christian, who supports the death penalty for gay men, for his views on the surrogate child of Sir Elton John and David Furnish.
On 28 December on the BBC News at Six (broadcast at 6:20pm due to the bank holiday), seven million people were shown a report about the birth of the couple’s first child. The report contained one original interview, with Stephen Green, of the group Christian Voice.
BBC entertainment correspondent Lizo Mzimba introduced Mr Green with the line: “Not everyone is pleased to see such a high profile same-sex couple start to raise a surrogate child.” The report then contained an interview in which Mr Green told the BBC: “This isn’t just a designer baby for Sir Elton John, this is a designer accessory… Now it seems like money can buy him anything, and so he has entered into this peculiar arrangement… The baby is a product of it. A baby needs a mother and it seems an act of pure selfishness to deprive a baby of a mother.”
As PinkNews.co.uk pointed out, Mr Green is no stranger to controversy. Aside from his support of a proposed death penalty for some forms of gay sex in Uganda, Mr Green once claimed that gay Welsh rugby star Gareth Thomas was a “wicked” role model for children and compared the gay pop star Ian Watkins (H- from the band Steps) to a serial killer when he came out. He also unsuccessfully attempted a private prosecution of the director-general of the BBC over the character of Jesus saying “I’m a little bit gay” during a broadcast of the satire Jerry Springer: The Opera.
The BBC have defended the decision to interview Mr Green with a statement to PinkNews.co.uk: “The practice of surrogacy is a sensitive subject and remains controversial in some quarters. Our short news bulletin featured Elton John talking about wanting to have a child and an opposing viewpoint. All sides of the debate on surrogacy have been widely reported in the news media and our coverage has reflected this.”
Look here’s a disclaimer, I label myself as a member of the LGBT community and I was surprised by the decision to include an interview with Mr Green on this story. I tweeted as much when I saw the programme on the BBC iPlayer (it has since been removed). It made me wonder what sort of balance the BBC wished to display. I wondered if they would interview a member of the Klu Klux Klan or the English Defence League if a mix-raced couple had a surrogate child. I also wondered why they didn’t interview a prominent republican when Prince William and Kate Middleton announced their engagement.
But I find the BBC’s defence all the more surprising on a professional level, particularly given my perspective as a television journalist.
It’s often necessary to seek out an opposing or balancing view to a news story. It’s one of the distinct obligations that are unique to broadcast news over the printed or online media.
I have to search out someone who doesn’t like, or has an alternative view on, a new feature that Facebook introduce or look around for someone who doesn’t think the latest device from Apple will be a hit. But you have to be sensible about it. Not every story I produce has someone advocating the contrary view.
When Microsoft launched the Kinect for X-Box, there wasn’t anyone serious who thought it would be a flop. But when Apple launched the iPad, someone serious, the media professor Jeff Jarvis told me that it wouldn’t be the saviour of the newspaper industry, no matter how much Rupert Murdoch would like it. So I included Jeff, but I didn’t have anyone criticising Microsoft.
What people including Stephen Fry, Johann Hari and others on Twitter are questioning is why the BBC felt it necessary to seek out an opposing view to a high-profile gay couple having a surrogate child.
Many people have commented on PinkNews that it would have been preferable for the BBC to seek out an expert in child care to say that Sir Elton is too old to have a baby, or maybe even someone like the gay consultant editor of the Daily Mail, Andrew Pierce who has criticised Elton for just that reason. Instead, the BBC approached someone who is opposed to any gay couple having a surrogate child, regardless of their personal circumstances.
I spoke to a senior source at the BBC who told me to be realistic as the report was broadcast over the Christmas break and that “lots of people are on holiday or not answering their phones”, therefore justifying the decision to use Mr Green.
Unfortunately, the broadcast last week is being interpreted by some in the gay community as just another gay gaffe by the BBC. Last year it apologised for hosting a debate entitled “Should homosexuals face the death penalty?” .
It’s clear that the question of balance is a complicated one, what do you think the BBC should have done?
Discuss this issue with Benjamin Cohen on Twitter right now. His username is @benjamincohen
There are 11 comments on this post
Clearly they have every right to include and opposing view, and some of the suggestions outlined above would have been just fine. If we take the English Defence League/KKK comparison, which I believe is a good one, then of course the BBC would not have approached them, nor used the Christmas break as an excuse to do so. I feel quite sad really because I am a long time fan of BBC news (although it clearly isn’t a patch on Channel 4!) but it really has been going downhill for quite sometime now, starting with the Dr David Kelly incident which, actually, started off quite admirably for the BBC before they let the Government bully them. But I digress.
I think there is a difference between reporting a balanced view and giving air time to a right wing christian fundimantalist who has who apear to be facist tendacies. ( Murdering people for their sexuality or comparing them to being a serial killer must be close to that) . Why couldn’t it just be reported as a celebrity couple having a child adopted, similar to maddona or angelina jolie. There can be no justification for giving this man air time and I intend to complain formaly and hope others will do so too.
Personally, I was looking at the pictures of Elton and thinking he is a little long in the tooth to have an infant. However, it would seem logical to, perhaps, include someone who feels that he’s a little old, and/or, that kids should have a mother and a father or that money shouldn’t be a determining factor in who gets kids. To interview someone who has advocated that gay people should not be allowed to LIVE, is just overly sensational and hateful. As the article pointed out, members of racial hate groups would not be interviewed if an interracial couple or a black couple were adopting or having a child by surrogacy.
Definitely a mistake by the BBC. If they felt it was important to air that discussion it should have been on something like Newsnight where it could have been given some space and the extreme views of Stephen Green balanced by more reasonable people.
The BBC appears to have made another of it’s huge faux pas. Each time they do them of late one has the distinct impression it is because they lead a sheltered, unreal, disconnected, corporate life or are they disdainful of the ‘real’ life the rest of us lead. To think that anyone that today advocates the death penalty for a human is given any time by media, far less audio time, almost has one wondering if the BBC wants to tittilate sadism. … this last decade we really have advanced in thinking from power-based punishment to comprehending there are physiological reasons for crime and sociological and Ken Clarke MP is showing his worth in recognising this. As homosexuality does not blatantly come into this any more than heterosexuals the BBC should not demonstrate ignorance by their choice of interviewee and so of homosexuality. What makes it even more perverse is that at least 1 of the team doing the programme must be Gay/Lesbian and probably having same sex copulation – what would the programme director have done if Mr Green had advocated their death? And as to Elton John and partner becoming parents – I can think of far less suitable heterosexual parents.
!!! what part did you not like!?
peace and happiness to you benjamin for 2011 and beyond.
personally i think it is probably more useful for children to be whenever possible brought up by their natural biological mother and father, and that having a natural female and natural male as role models and guides is by far the better option.
however since we live in a world where laws and rules have twisted natural family life apart in the pursuit of capitalist profit it is no wonder the natural female/male parental unit has suffered.
i believe same sex interactions and loving partnerships are a happy quirk of nature and that people disposed that way should be treated as equal to those who are of the more natural traditional bent (no pun intended), however the biological reality is one where to create new life a male and a female are required.
sir elton and david have been together for many years and they must have discussed the notion of becoming parents throughly.
i’m sure they will provide bundles of love and wisdom with the upbringing of this child and who wouldn’t want to wish them all the best.
i don’t fully agree but all the best to them and to other same sex couplings who get into parenthood.
Maybe the BBC could try and have a bit more diversity in their news editorial staff as there have been a string of repulsive opinions present as fact on BBC news broadcasts (Newsbeat being a particularly draw-dropping source). If the only experience or knowledge you have concerning adoption comes from having read Dickens then you can only find balance by accident.
The best response would have been for the adoption to go unmarked, births and marriages generally get covered in Hello and on soft sofa shows.
And personally, I’d wish Elton and David the best fortune for what is always a difficult job.
‘Rube Goldberg John’ -
When hi-tec got it on?
Framing the issue the way it was done was a mistake. It only invites the foaming at the mouth that will undoubtedly appear when the issue is so personalized as to target Elton John and David Furnish. The framing could have been in terms of ‘gay adoption’ or ‘gay surrogacy’, or ‘changing family values/structure’. The clumsy citing of the two parents merely invites the rabid and predictable nonsense that is the apparent stock in trade of Mr. Green.
[...] Sir Elton John has become a dad Put aside for a moment any qualms about the 63-year old temper-tantrum-on-short-legs with a £290,000 flower habit as a role model, and disregard the rumours about payment to ensure the birth happened on 25th December as the ultimate Christmas present, and think instead of the whole picture of a financial arrangement between an unknown surrogate mother in California and an aging, overweight, homosexual with dubious priorities. And spare a thought for the resultant offspring: Zachary Jackson Levon Furnish-John. Admittedly the pop star did try recently to adopt an HIV-positive toddler from a Ukrainian orphanage, but he was denied on the grounds of his age, and the fact that his civil partnership with David Furnish was not recognised. So what isn’t good enough for an abandoned Ukrainian is suddenly acceptable for Zachary? Hello? How many tribunals in this country would grant permission for such an arrangement without the pressure of fame and fortune, I wonder? OK, it did become legal in April here in the UK for two men to have a child by a surrogate and to have both their names on the birth certificate. But we aren’t talking about your…