Complaint
The programme was filmed at the historic house of Audley End in Suffolk. In a sequence dealing with sugar, produced in the Caribbean by slave labour, the presenter said 鈥減ast owners of Audley End were among those who profited from the [slave] 迟谤补诲别鈥. A viewer complained that this was inaccurate, as former owners had not been involved in the slave trade as such, and that there was an important distinction between that and sharing in economic benefits arising from the institution of slavery. The ECU considered the complaint in the light of the 91福利社鈥檚 editorial standards of accuracy.
Outcome
Former owners of the house included Henry Howard, who had been Lord Commissioner of Trade and Foreign Plantations (responsible for the regulation of chattel slavery), Richard Griffin had been Provost Marshall of Jamaica at a time when its sugar plantations were worked by slaves, and George Neville-Grenville, who received compensation for the emancipation of slaves he had formerly owned. While recognising that there might be contexts in which the distinction between such kinds of involvement with slavery and direct participation in the transatlantic slave trade, the ECU did not consider it material in this context, or likely to mislead viewers in relation to the topic under discussion. It therefore found no departure from the 91福利社鈥檚 editorial standards of accuracy.
Not upheld