Forty-five percent of the general public say reality TV programmes depicting the lives of the poor are in bad taste - although almost a quarter of Britons think they're interesting and entertaining
A new genre of reality TV programmes depicting the lives of people on lower incomes and generally living in housing estates has attracted criticism in recent days, with some commentators branding the genre ‘poverty porn’. Two of the shows criticised are Channel Four’s Skint, about a father of seven on a council estate in Scunthorpe, and BBC Three’s People Like Us, about the Manchester suburb Harpurhey previously described as the UK’s ‘most deprived suburb’
New YouGov research finds that nearly half of the public (45%) say the programmes “are in bad taste. They make a spectacle out of poor people's lives and are bad for society”, although nearly a quarter say they “are interesting and entertaining, and give people an opportunity to see how the poorest people in our society live.”
Londoners and 18-24 year olds are the least likely to oppose the programmes however: only 39% of both groups think the shows are in bad taste, compared to 54% of Britons aged 60 or over and half of people living in the North.
One council worker claims his daughter was given alcohol before appearing on People Like Us, and said: “This Jeremy Kyle-style, laugh-at-the-chavs type of television has run its course and the BBC should not be propagating this harmful and misleading image of the working class.” A Harpurhey councillor said: "We are now collectively going to go down and talk to the BBC about this disgraceful programme. People are up in arms – public money has been used to run down the Harpurhey area."
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