Dispatches Ch4:Your views

[wabbithunta]

Just sent this complaint to Channel 4:

I would like to complain about the biased and unbalanced tone of the Dispatches programme this evening. It was totally one-sided, with commentary only by pro-privatisers, and based on limited research in only 2 offices in South London. What's the agenda, that's what 'd like to know? Us posties work hard for very little reward, and it will be us who get it in the neck on the streets tomorrow because of your programme's biased reporting. You didn't even have the common decency to ask us what is wrong with our industry. You didn't ask a single serious question. Do you know about Downstream Access and the privatising agenda of the regulatory body? Do you know that private mail companies are riding on the back of the Royal Mail, and being subsidised by the tax-payer at the rate of over 2p a letter? Did you ask any posties how they feel about the destruction of their industry? No. Just cheap, shoddy, superficial journalism, based on sneaky, underhand methods of gathering information. What I want to know is will us posties get a right of reply to this? We don't care about Crozier. He's made his millions, but we are suffering under the regime he put in place. Please let us have our say.

Well said Roy.. Bet they don't respond though, as they know that they'd get "shot down" by the posties all over the country

[Pegman]

I'm not that worried, C4 only gets about 3m viewers, probably works out to one a walk, so one custoemr moaning tomorrow will at least be someone to talk to

[Spedley]

I'm quite please from my own perspective of that program.

Presumably 99% of what they filmed is on the cutting room floor and for the 1% they did show, Dispatches needed to prompt the viewer into making negative conclusions. There were several points where the Dispatches view did not actually match the filmed statements.

Of course, I hope it doesn't damage the postal system as much as the last Dispatches did.

[milesy]

i wonder if crozier had higson round at his mansion to watch on his private cinema screen!! slapping each other on the back saying we done good! mandy will be pleased!!

[protect us]

didnt understand the 4 day week? we have always been on a 5 day and i am close to london ! as for the frames we have them that big -a piss take rougthly about 700 calls ! far too much of a push day in day out ,rounds have doubled in size trouble is every office has implemented change differently and surely the whole business should be all the same ?? anyway back to the point on the dispatches - i felt ashamed of how a excellent job has gone to being one of the worst to do and the public blame us and look on us as a piece of s..t and now proberbly think we are thieves ! in my opinion the fairest programme was last yrs panorama and that portrayed the closest i have seen to the job . well done c4 you are known for your controversity now a que at the callers door awaits us all 2mw with the public having yet another go at us and looking down on us ! proud to be a postie ?? not anymore thanks c4 ! roll on a redundancy package - no such luck !

[westlondonpostie]

Just loved the bit about Nine Elms, where one casual is buzzed in by another! and when the manager turns up he doesn't even ask how they got in!

[Spedley]

Just loved the bit about Nine Elms, where one casual is buzzed in by another! and when the manager turns up he doesn't even ask how they got in!

Yes, very funny. In fairness they did only get into the reception until a memeber of managment was present ... unless they are there to steal pens?

[baldrick]

Just loved the bit about Nine Elms, where one casual is buzzed in by another! and when the manager turns up he doesn't even ask how they got in!

Yes, very funny. In fairness they did only get into the reception until a memeber of managment was present ... unless they are there to steal pens?

Only because they waited there. They could have gone anywhere if they had wanted to.
The manager was found by one of them.

[westlondonpostie]

Just loved the bit about Nine Elms, where one casual is buzzed in by another! and when the manager turns up he doesn't even ask how they got in!

Yes, very funny. In fairness they did only get into the reception until a memeber of managment was present ... unless they are there to steal pens?

Yep they got into the reception area, and management was only aware that they were there, when one of them went and found a manager!

[baldrick]

Snap.

[Richie89]

What a load of rubbish. At least when the BBC did a documentary they tried to make it as balanced and fair as possible and showed it from both sides.

By the look of this one they had a clear agenda from the start, probably decided what they were going to show before they even went in there.
I didnt expect anything different, knowing the usual s**t channel 4 broadcast.

Lets not get into the north/south thing, none of us are happy with whats going on, we're all in the same boat. United we stand.

[smokerjim]

What gets me is, when I started I believed the management spin - I had no reason to disbelieve it, as they had years of experience ( or so I thought ) and I had 5 minutes - but over time my bullshit detector started working and imo they are guilty of bullshit until proven otherwise....but if these guys really are professional journalists, they should have seen thought it straight away, also they should have researched their subject before hand - the whole thing about the switch from 10hrs to 8hrs & the fight to get it back again was all down to the highly contentious issue of EA ( to me, that is just the most obvious issue ), and why did they show so much footage of the managers in comparison to blue shirts.....it surely isn't down to getting juicier footage from them is it? If I had questions when I started, I almost NEVER asked a manager about it without asking the bloke next to me first!

And with a team of two, it should be standard that they attempt to get a wide picture...one temp in London, one temp in anywhere else in the south, like ME, TN, WD, BN, PO, MK, SL, OX - ANYWHERE ouside of London. Were they wearing RM issue shoes.....cos if they were, they wouldn't sound so bloody cocky about walking on snow and ice ( and didn't they hear about the severe weather warnings, suggesting people don't leave their homes unless it was vital! I get London local weather at home, so I heard the same reports they would have done ) - the one surprising thing was the guy that assists our competitors, saying that RM say mail is going down, year on year, yet at the same time packet volumes really are going up....but they have not done anything to make it easier for us to deliver packets ( no change there )

I'm leaving this now, getting too tense and irate

[Pat Ostman]

As I said in a previous thread. CH4 do not make their own programmes. They are approached by filmmakers with ideas and they are then commissioned. This one seems nothing more than a student project spearheaded to make some shock money off the backs of hard working posties.

Take no notice, the majority of your customers should know you try your best.

[labbloke]

Agree with everyone else about the unrepresentative nature of this 'shock telly'

A quick point on the queues at the callers office though, with parcels and packets going throught the roof, just when will RM make turning a blind eye to 'safe places' for packets rather than bring it back to the office, into policy, like TNT, Citylink etc.

[RelocatedRick]

Remember what happened last time Dispatches and Simon Barnes did the bash the posty doc in 2004?

here is the quote from Socialist Worker. The apology seems to have been dropped from the C4 website.

Late delivery of apology from Channel 4 bosses dated 13 November 2004 | issue 1927
CHANNEL 4’s Dispatches programme has finally admitted it portrayed postal workers unfairly and misleadingly in a programme broadcast in April.

Postal workers and their CWU union were outraged by the programme, which unleashed a media witch-hunt against “lazy, thieving postmen”.

The programme purported to show postal workers stealing credit cards from the post.

It was advertised with posters which showed an actor posing as a Royal Mail worker apparently stealing from an envelope.

Channel 4 has finally issued a statement, six months after the programme.

The statement says that it “acknowledges and accepts, following evidence supplied after broadcast by Barclaycard, that the credit card had not in fact been taken from the post as the worker had claimed but had been fraudulently obtained and was being fenced by a temporary postal worker away from Royal Mail premises.”

It goes on to concede, “Newspaper advertisements to promote the programme consisted of a mocked-up photograph showing an envelope containing a birthday card being opened and money taken from it by an actor posing as a Royal Mail worker.

“During the period of undercover filming no such or similar acts were filmed.”