TV soaps accused of irresponsibility

TV soaps have again come under fire for seeming to promote binge drinking and drunken behaviour. Speaking at the Labour Party conference, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith attacked TV programmes which ‘celebrate’ drunkenness.

Ms Smith did not single out particular programmes for criticism, and aides denied that she was referring specifically to soap operas. They suggested that she was thinking of fly-on-the-wall programmes such as Sky One’s Ibiza Uncovered, which shows British holidaymakers drinking heavily before having one-night stands. Ms Smith said: “Why celebrate drunken behaviour on our TV screens? Alcohol misuse can cause real damage to real people.”

However, alcohol misuse groups have, in the past, complained of ‘glorification’ of heavy drinking in soap operas including EastEnders and Holby City on the BBC and Coronation Street on ITV. And a week after Ms Smith had spoken, the Portman Group, the alcohol industry’s ‘social responsibility’ body, made an official complaint to OFCOM and the BBC about an episode of Holby City.

In the episode concerned, two doctors were depicted in a bar after a stressful day downing five shots of tequila each ‘in rapid succession’. The Portman Group complained that it was implied that their drinking would lead to a sexual encounter, and also that the programme finished without any portrayal of the harmful effects that would have been caused by this kind of drinking.

The Group commented that if a drinks producer were to encourage excessive drinking or suggest an association with sexual success, it would be a clear breach of the alcohol advertising and marketing rules.

David Poley, Chief Executive of the Portman Group, said: “We appreciate that programme makers want to mirror some aspects of real life but they should avoid the encouragement of harmful, rapid and excessive drinking. We would not advocate censorship, nor deny that storylines of alcohol misuse can be used to good and positive effect. But in this case, the characters drank far too much and the harmful consequences were not shown. There are strict controls on alcohol advertising and marketing but the impact of these rules is being diluted by irresponsible programming.”

In 2003, Alcohol Concern published a study, ‘The portrayal of alcohol and alcohol consumption in television news and drama programmes’, which found that scenes of drinking appear very frequently on the TV screen, especially in soap operas. It also suggested that TV portrayals of drinking offer a very selective – and, in Soaps and Drama, remarkably uniform – image of alcohol consumption as a routine, pleasant and unproblematic component of social interaction, a marker of celebrations, achievements, romance and sexual relations, and an integral component of ‘having a good time’. Conversely, television soaps and drama offer little portrayal of the wide range of potentially serious personal and social consequences of alcohol consumption generally, and excessive drinking more particularly.

While negative or problematising portrayals of alcohol consumption do occur – particularly in news programmes – these are infrequent by comparison with the dominant emphasis on positive, convivial, funny images stressing the pleasant, socially facilitating, and unproblematic aspects of drinking.

The Alcohol Concern study concluded that it was television’s unbalanced portrayal of alcohol and drinking that should be criticised: the selective emphasis on the positive aspects of alcohol consumption at the expense of images/messages which highlight, explore, or represent the potential personal and social dangers, cost, and consequences of drinking.