In 2012 I produced a film for BBC Newsnight, which was an investigation into Bed and Breakfast accommodation and the housing of young families, in cramped and dingy rooms, who were placed there for well over the legal limit of six weeks. The film was difficult to make. It involved spending weeks creeping in and out of bed and breakfast properties in South London, pretending I wasn't really a journalist, but was instead visiting friends who lived there. I received bed bug bites from sitting on infested beds for too long, saw raw sewage seeping back into bathrooms from faulty systems and listened to mothers talk to me, whilst they sobbed and washed sheets in tiny sinks or fed their children from cramped kitchenettes. Nobody wants to talk to a journalist when this kind of thing is happening to them. Who would? And out of the fifteen or so families I spoke to for the film, only two would agree to come on camera. So it took time to find the contacts, and get the access. And most of that time I spent in really grotty conditions with people who were extremely distressed by their circumstances.
Screenshot from BBC Newsnight film on homeless families living in B&Bs. Credit: BBC Newsnight
On the night the film was transmitted, I watched from the gallery, as is the norm, and as the film was ending, one of the programme's staff producers came over and asked me 'where did you come across this story?' so I told him that I'd been visiting a young girl who was living in the hotel, and had seen her living conditions first hand. So I had begun to ask questions. His response was 'that's so unusual - to go into a story from the bottom up', and that statement sent a small chill up my back. Because in so many ways this epitomises the problem with BBC journalism. It's become 'unusual' for them to go into a story from the 'bottom up'. I replied to my colleague saying 'well what other way is there to get a story? I don't think the DCLG are going to send me a press release telling me about it?' I didn't mean to rebuke him. But really, how else to find out these things, unless we go in at the 'bottom'?
