48 HOURS BINGE

[tomstevenson]

I'm all for sliding scales for drink-driving, Jerry, but it's too rational - it'll never catch on.

Steve, we have a programme in the UK called The Right to Reply, which is a sort of halfway house to what you're suggesting. It goes out at 7.30 on a Saturday night on Channel 4 and usually covers two or three programmes that have incensed viewers. One of the viewers is then given the opportunity to produce a 5 minute film (with help and assistance from the professionals) to rip apart the programme in question, producing whatever evidence and argument necessary. Then that viewer sits at a table with the producer or director of the programme and a moderator. The most famous case involved a documentary allegedly following drugs being smuggled from Colombia to London, where viewers actually saw the smuggler going through customs (viewed by a secret camera) and then in a hotel room afterwards where he produced the drugs for the reporter. It was all fabricated and the television company received a massive fine. But there are other programmes that feature on people whose lives have been unjustly ruined as a result.

[This message has been edited by tomstevenson (edited 01-16-99).]