What can we learn from the Post Office scandal publicity (including TV)?

The question of balance is a matter of legal jurisdiction, if we are talking UK production/broadcast then there are significant restrictions, the following is an excerpt from ITV guidance but similar applies to all UK production/broadcast:

ITV Producers Handbook

"There are many different ways to tell a story, and all TV programmes are constructed to impose a coherent narrative on the material, and edited to tell that story in the most effective way. But programmes must not get factual information wrong, either by design or by sloppy research. They must not invent or fake events, or pass them off as being actuality, or present dramatised reconstructions of events as being actual events. The source and authenticity of any third party footage must be verified."
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Streaming services seem to have greater latitude even when made available in the UK for example Netflix's The Crown but then few people would take The Crown seriously in the way that "Mr Bates vs The Post Office" has been received by the UK media and public. And this speaks to the even greater issue of cultural and language reception.

On this forum we happily talk in English about a worldwide health problem and for us primary English speakers we talk as though the issues we identify are easily communicated globally - but of course that's just a matter of convenience and probably a touch of cultural arrogance given the often large cultural difference even within just the Anglophone world. On the forum we can muddle through those differences but story telling via media whether dramatisation or documentary has to be a contained narrative. So when talking about getting the media interested in ME/CFS we need to understand who the audience is intended to be and what the laguage and cultural limits are. "Mr Bates vs The PO" is a quintessentially UK story, in fact as told it is quintessentially English, it might get an audience outside the UK but for curiosity value not as an agency of social change.

With the audience limited by language and culture we are then presented by the question "who cares about this ?" is it really something that a cost preoccupied Producer is going to see having a justifiable audience ? Just because it matters to us, it doesn't mean that there is an audience of millions who want to watch another sad story about illness that has no final triumph, no outstanding heroes, no winners, and no giants that need to be slain ? Claims that treatments don't work are not exceptional and demonstration of harm requires evidence if it is to have transformative power. Real life names would have to be used and if we are talking about a UK focus, even Netflix might baulk at taking on the attack dogs of UK libel lawyers supported by the testimonies of a raft of UK medical great and good.

I think "Mr Bates vs The Post Office" is best viewed as Unicorn - a rare creature that happened to hit a sweet spot, certainly it's useful as a case study but I think it tells us more about what the media doesn't offer, than what it does.

 

Yes, which is what we don't really have at present. Too many people, too confusing a story arc, no hero, no single villain, and no obvious route to resolution.

There are several stories that could be told at some point, perhaps focusing on the journey of one person but with parallels to others doing similar work in different ways, different countries, or different times. But before it will make sense in the way the Post Office documentary does, we need stronger evidence and for a resolution to be within sight. A story needs some kind of ending.

The PACE trial might eventually make a good basis, but at the moment it looks too much like an impenetrable jungle of entrenched opinion. You couldn't, for instance, properly honour the efforts of a kind, likeable, quietly determined man like Graham McPhee unless you could convince an audience with no background knowledge that he was right, and that people knew he was right. TV producers know that even small misjudgements in presentation or timing can have horrible consequences.

 

Prior to the this current scandal, I had been drawn to the model seen in examples from historic accounts. The pattern seemed to be the publication of a relatively serious academic book followed by a more populist account followed by either TV or film drama and/or a novel. You saw this in ‘The Other Boleyn Girl’ and in a more extreme form with Dan Brown’s ‘Da Vinci Code’.

My lottery winning fantasy was to fund a serious academic account of our current understanding of ME and also a more populist account that addressed such as the PACE scandal. Also I unsuccessfully tried to influence a friend who was a successful screen writer to take an interest in the scandals around ME in the UK. Sadly he unexpectedly passed two years ago.

I think the Sub postmasters story, loosely follows this pattern, in that the equivalent of the serious academic work was the legal work in the courts, the more populist accounts appeared in such as the Private Eye coverage and then the ITV drama provided the breakthrough to wider public consciousness.

My feeling is that we currently lack the good academic synthesis of the huge amounts of information that would enable more populist writers to either write an accessible book or the compelling drama.

 

I learnt that selling stamps and other postal services is obviously an imprisonable offense, and that doing it from premises with a big red sign on the outside just makes it easier for the authorities to find and arrest people.

 

It's probably possible to make a drama about almost subject. It's just finding the right way in to engage the audience & do it effectively.

I don't know if it's relevant, but I'm thinking of this Imagine episode with Russell T Davis - https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001tl5l/imagine-russell-t-davies-the-doctor-and-me

He says that that he was adamant that there would be no mention of AIDS in Queer As Folk. Maybe because at that time gay men would be equated with AIDS, just as at one time British Asian stories were always about arranged marriages, until Hanif Kureishi's dramas and Goodness, Gracious Me changed that. He came to realise over time that he did want to write about AIDS, but didn't know how to go about it. It's A Sin is an amazing drama but it maybe needed that time to gestate.

 

I am thinking about the way in to the subject of ME that will draw people in. I'm not sure that ME itself is enough for those who do not have a personal interest ( self, relative, friend etc). There is also a lot of negative stuff out there that is critical of ME, doubts its seriousness, which may deter people from feeling sympathy.

While each one of us may feel the suffering of individuals in the story, to me it seems that the BPS story is the one that is unusual. How many people would believe that there is a group of doctors who act as a group against the interest of patients, hide and distort research results, etc? Their positions of power in medical institutions and their links with insurance companies is a story in itself.

The start of the story is out there. Wessely's interview in the Observer in 2011 with its dramatic descriptions of police interviews, alarm bells to the police station, knives in lectures, him feeling safer in the middle east, his post being opened, his choosing not to treat ME patients; he produced plenty of material, much of it not validated. That story is different. That is the scandal.

 

Yup. But it can work both ways, e.g. Afflicted. Not really a dramatization, but it doesn't claim to be a documentary either and for that reason they could do the worst possible framing and get away with it, even after lying about not being hostile to the participants.

 

Agree. Although.. I remember reading the intro from @PhysiosforME when they began and what they had discovered and found it compelling, and I think the workwell and Bateman and others' attitude and discovery has been pretty good at 'dating' things around 2018 when the CDC updated things as a turning point that should have happened.

Which makes for quite an interesting angle where people could 'flash back' into what was going on before (and how many pwme were often either gaslighted into believing things themselves about 'others with me' and what might help them, until they tried it out themselves, as well as being gaslighted because many of us were unaware that e.g. GPs were being told to pretend to believe us and just string us along like 'we know they are mad but just let them thing you get it, but there is nothing you can do etc') and the attitude of certain individuals going forward from that.

It is around then that the parliamentary debates begin then showing there are so many who were really badly hurt by PACE, and indeed GET being still ongoing.

And yet the articles from certain people that were actively trying to make basically all pwme sound like horrible trolls who were deluded were at their peak. With little right to reply going on. SO I think there was a huge 'media' component going on, and interestingly the 'behaviourists' clearly acitvely knew that creating the 'world' and 'attitude of others to us' was important to enforce us 'over-exerting' and not getting a break etc. which is why I suspect they know they were wrong because they know exactly how to push the buttons to make sure pwme can't move forward re: energy limitations meaning prevarication and making things drawn out really works.

The biggest issue is probably making sure that they begin with choosing a point in time, however, that hammers home what the condition actually is in an understandable form. Because as I say even those of us with it were so embroiled in the beliefs that you must be able to do some exertion and that is good because 'use it or lose it' and all that sort of thing - and many of us it affected us not in 'official treatments' sense but in 'lack of adjustments' and moving carparks further away or extending a workload or workday or being suggested that going to the gym might be good and you kidding yourself you are 'doing well' until at 6months it is too late and the damage hits just at the same time you realise that 'getting fitter' doesn't happen as a reward for 'pushing'. That's when you start to peel away what devastation is lying around underneath all of this, and how people came to get hidden by being trodden into their beds etc. and unable to even get their voice heard, nevermind believed and so on.

The tricky bit is the 'how the story ends for good' part given I'd guess in history we've had a lot of people who've done great things at first and then got carried away or gone down angles that weren't as great as the initial ones etc.

And I get the sense that the rule of stories is having that 'closure' of there being some sort of 'plan for hope' - and currently we know some bits of it that are relevant to those who are 'in it' like funding, but the specifics of what a good programme of research is, and who and wher it will end, how good and useful clinics that are actually medical and scientific enough to support that will actually happen ... well I wonder whether the irony might be that these are needing to be articulated well at least?

 

I think this is the risk. A lot in the media seem to get enchanted by the fake pseudophil 'in the mind' and 'reversing dualism accusations' etc not realising it is the opposite of both philosophy and psychology, because it sounds good.

Most people also give anything with the label mental health a free pass on scrutiny because they for some reason believe it is a world and concept they can't possibly 'bring the normal logic to'. WHIch is also nonsense. And also because the niche areas who are so vocal in certain bits of mental health like to sell terms like 'manifestation' or 'lack of judgement' in the individuals themselves, and thereby cast doubt on their own testimony even when a condition itself is shown not to actually impact that persons logic, insight, or comes in forms where it wouldn't for many depending on 'the cause'. They just daredn't interfere in case they get 'hoodwinked' by the 'deluded person'. Like all aspects of the area involve some sort of magic only certain experts can see, understand and judge so noone dare step in and ask for it to be justified etc.

And are of course sold the idea that these people of course 'just want to help' so step back and close their eyes to the idea these things cause harm, even logically in some of the aspects of them. Because apparently you criticise one bit, you stop all from accessing mental health support is the implicit accusation (which is wrong because it should be a more looked into and above-board area because of this not the other way around).

SO most don't realise that for example just because these things have nicked the names and acronyms of CBT or ACT or whatever, they certainly aren't the same thing and have definitely not come from the background of 'doing the work' that e.g. Beck did in modelling catastrophisation or was done for phobias in creating something specific to specific types of causes of specific conditions. And that really these are finger-in-the-wind 'what we will tell them they should think' based on the bigoted mindset of their own inventors' opinion of 'everyone should think like me' and 'what that demographics issue is'. Which isn't 'mental health' or 'medicine' but really just like a random old bloke in the pub deciding that a young woman he knows should 'care less about what people say about her' or 'should get up earlier' or 'needs to stop thinking about her aches and pains'. Distorted into fake language. Because it is based in no real proper science to justify that model.

And the CBT part they nicked was merely the pretty combative 'delivery mechanism'. SO the only tried and tested part is whether it 'hammers in the messages' and not 'are the messages harmful or helpful'. LIke someone claiming their new migraine medication is really effective because it uses the same spray in the cheek method as the vitamins do, which bypasses the gut or whatever. And noone asking 'but what is the actual medication, and has it got anything logically useful for migraines'. EDIT: or of course can it be harmful and is that properly logged and tested


What we all I guess implicitly hope is that people with empathy will watch and think that pwme need a removal of this horrific dystopia and begin being allowed to exist without abuse and distortion of our needs, so we can feel safe trying to manage our condition and be understood - as well as of course the system getting on with funding the right people who actually want to move forward things that might actually become useful treatments in the future.

To sort that bit out and not trap us under the same people delivering the same dystopia with a different excuse would require someone brave enough to get to grips with proper scientific psychology and question an area that runs a lot of the 'mental health' pretty dodgily. Not just ME. As it has expanded into all sorts over the years (and then we've got 'rehabbers' and physios and OTs thinking they can make it a big basis of their role and focusing on 'motivating' as the only mindset), and expanded its generic approach pushing out those with psychology broad training who might question what it does etc more and more by 'if you want a job or a degree then you toe the line' type of thing.

SO how do we 'side-step' whilst covering the bit we need to of it all with this particular aspect? particularly given they used the old Popper's can't prove a negative re: 'hysteria comeback' and 'all illnesses in certain people might be a little bit driven by the mind' being as far as they think impossible to disprove, or certainly in a little soundbite or short-story like they tend to favour? With the postmasters it is just common sense that remedying the situation, providing justice, apology and restitution is teh starting point for hurt and psychological damage they might have. Yet we've been pillowed into a different world where apparently if we cried or our bodies are devastated by illness + abusive treatment for too long then it's our mindset that will 'lead the change' and keeping us in the same trodden-on situation is fine. And I'm not sure we can assume most watching will see that in the same way they should given how much PR has gone on, and will go on around any programme from you know who unless these things are tackled head-on.

 

Having said that I've just been watching SKy news and they had some sub-postmasters on there telling their stories. Very moving about what happened to them and most having to stop part way through telling things because of the hurt. Important coverage.

One gentleman has just mentioned the effect on his mental health and how when he sought treatment he has looked back at his notes from where he was saying he was 'being pursued by a government agency for missing money' (or something similar) they'd written it down as 'delusions of grandeur'. So this false narrative and getting the truth acknowledged is really important, and highly linked to the 'narrative' relating to good vs damaging support on mental health if the person supposedly helping you is believing a lie and therefore assuming 'delusions' in the other, when it is actually that they need support because they are being pursued and need support vs this injustice.

 

For anyone wanting more points of analysis on the dramatic narrative - Toby Jones gives an actor's insight into what made the PO story work: https://shows.acast.com/media-confi...ffice-scandal-toby-jones-on-his-dramas-impact

Also a key aspect of the overall narrative has been the dogged persuit of the what actually happened by Private Eye magazine whose editor is continuing to harry self serving politicians: (sorry X links)

https://twitter.com/user/status/1745222369428328828


https://twitter.com/user/status/1745231747996848556

 

But if we relate that to the PO/Horizon story are we really saying that Wessely is a Paula Vennels figure and that the rag bag of assorted UK Psychs who are the conceiving body of BPS are equivalent to the UK Government, Fujitsu Consultants and the UK Post Office ?

Vennels was an exec charged by a Board answerable to Government, with making the PO profitable, she was always going to be a villain with few if any friends. In contrast Wessely has numerous friends across a wide academic and political field, in person (I'm told) he's a pleasant, somewhat quiet professorial type, he's never earned £millions or caused people to be sent to prison, his anti patient story telling is reprehensible but doesn't have the immediacy of sending in auditors to destroy someone's livelihood based on false evidence. Sharp and White are less personable but the whole of the UK BPS school amounts (post NICE) not to a monstrous agency of State but to a weird collection of academics with some unprofessional and increasingly sidelined attitudes to science and patients.

The Post Office story is essentially a giant killing story with an evil Queen and evil empire to add to the mix. In the ME/CFS case all the candidates for giants and evil monarchs are individuals who lack stature to be believable as giants or isolated enough to be accepted for public debasement - they can't be attacked without profession/institution/friends/family being energised to protect them. And there's no evil empire in play - NICE proved that while a bit inadequate the NHS wasn't in the hands of Emperor Palpatine.

Thinking about narratives both documentary and dramatic is a useful advocacy exercise but the point is always to look for what an audience will respond to and not simply the narratives that we tell ourselves as explanations of our histories.

 

@CRG I think the ME story is a difficult one to find a way into that will resonate. I post regularly various aspects of what is happening with ME, (research, Unrest when it was new, newspaper reports on inquests ( Maeve's story), Kara Jane's story, George Monbiot, Decode etc) and get very little if any response to any of it. The same two people respond. I continue to do it because it matters, so many of us suffer, and I don't know what else I can do.

I was slow to get into the ME world but the 2011 Observer article about Wessely shook me to the core. I had been diagnosed with ME for three years by that point although had had it longer. I am embarrassed to say that I fell for the BPS story line for a while. After all it must be true mustn't it with such a personable doctor ( from that admired profession) saying it?

When I read David Tuller, Virology Blog, the PACE story , I was gobsmacked. It was a cracking read and it's a cracking story. Add in Alem Matthees giving up his health to obtain the information needed to break the Pace story.

I don't think we should try to parallel the PO story. Of course all the roles and responsibilities are different but in both cases lives are destroyed.

The story of ME is one in its own right except that the development of long covid has increased its credibility to many. I agree with you that it would be a hard task because the status and contacts of the main figures and the medical world are powerful and known to stick together. In a way that's what gives it its different slant. Look at the last minute attempt using a personal contact to highjack the Nice process. No, it didn't work but it could so easily have done.

I also agree with you that we need to look at narratives that audiences will respond to and unfortunately and unfairly, the putting out of individual M.E. stories has not seemed to work.

I have a hospital appointment this afternoon so will not be on here. Interestingly the rheumatology Consultant I am seeing, at our first appointment when reviewing my health history, told me that he though ME had had a tough time so maybe there is support if only we could access it.

 

Post Office Horizon software originally aimed at claimants

The Horizon software at the centre of the current Post Office scandal was originally designed to save money and reduce fraud in connection with benefits and pension payments. Even though the Benefits Agency dropped the software, there are disturbing parallels between the way sub-postmasters were, and claimants still are, treated.

£700 million lost
Horizon was a joint venture between the Post Office, the Benefits Agency (as the DWP was then called) and ICL, a subsidiary of Fujitsu.

The intention was to create a swipe card system for benefits and pensions to be paid out at Post Offices, replacing paper payment books.

The project began in 1996, but by 1999 the Benefits agency had lost all faith in the system ever working and pulled out, leaving the taxpayer with a massive £700 million bill with nothing to show at the end of it.

In desperation, the project was repurposed to allow electronic bookkeeping to replace paper accounts in post offices.

And the result of that is now playing out in the media, the courts and a public inquiry.

Misuse of powers
That the Benefits Agency pulled out of the Horizon system it so its credit.

But there are many alarming parallels between the current DWP and the Post Office.

Both have the power to conduct their own criminal investigations and both routinely misuse these powers.

The Post Office threatened sub-postmasters with prosecution for theft unless they admitted wrongdoing and agreed to pay back all the money they allegedly owed.

The reality was that the Post Office very often had no evidence that any theft had taken place and would not have been able to bring such a charge. But sub-postmasters were never given the opportunity to examine the alleged evidence.

Similarly, claimants interviewed under caution by the DWP are often told that if they end their claim and agree terms to pay back any alleged overpayment, they will escape prosecution for theft.

Many claimants agree, without understanding that the DWP have failed to show them any evidence of the alleged overpayment.

If such cases go to tribunal, rather than a criminal court, they are very often thrown out – or the alleged overpayment dramatically reduced - because of a lack of evidence. The DWP has such poor systems that they often cannot actually show whether payments took place or how much they were for.

In other cases, the claimant will insist that they informed the DWP of a change of circumstances but the DWP will be unable to supply a copy of the document they received from the claimant, even though there is evidence it existed.

https://www.benefitsandwork.co.uk/news/post-office-horizon-software-originally-aimed-at-claimants

 

I agree with everyone here! All the views.

ME history isn’t like the Post Office manager situation.
Except….For the central over arching theme.

People made victims of an injustice with fatal consequences. One that several branches of the state and individuals in high office there were involved in enacting to the benefit of commercial corporations. So at its core it is true, this is one story with the treatment of people with ME, in terms of making relatively powerless individuals pay a personal price for the aims and ambitions of the relatively powerful individuals and of people whose lives are mown down by self-serving organisations.

But, this is common ground only so much as it is commonly shared with every large scale injury to individuals and groups via capital and state. Of this vast whole, I think there is as much water as there could be between these two groups, us and them.

Although comparatively little material progress towards justice was made in the decades during which the post office scandal unfolded the tireless efforts and demoralising work undertaken by victims and their supporters eventually attracted the attention of sympathetic media. This in turn attracted more media coverage. In the end there were phases of heightened attention followed by lulls but this trickled on.

The interest in making TV, really decent TV came not at the forefront of this push but far far down the road. It’s proven motivating which is exciting. I would never doubt the power of art and storytelling. This work helped people in the audience who might not otherwise of been able to appreciate the importance of this issue or the extent of the cruelty of individuals in power and systems of oppression.

But it was prior to this work that Postmaster/mistress reputations were restored. As individuals. Their reputations were tarnished one by one , they were indicted individually. For something that they were presumed to of done, not by virtue of it being obvious that they would do this ting simply because of their chosen profession. But because of something presumed to be done due to individual failure. They weren’t readily believed. They were cast out. They were smeared. But once their bravery was finally rewarded by a trickle of sympathetic coverage and then an individual judicial win wider media began to coalesce around their cause. Better late than never but still late.

But they are the Great British icons the ‘honest, hard working small business owners’ that we hear about on every rightwing radio station everyday of the week. Invoked not infrequently in order to unfavourably compare those who, say oh I don’t know….”Claim that they’re too sick to work” and….”Claim benefits, while hard working Brits pay for this with their own taxes”.

There is currently a reaction of near unanimous sympathy, due to the fact that the treatment of Post Office managers gives lie to the foundational myth of our “nation of shop keepers” that small business owners entering this capitalist system with a good attitude and a fine work ethic will be looked after, valued and rewarded for their contribution to the economy and through this society. A beautiful drama about the individual story and true life struggle of a member or members of any other group of people suffering grave injustice, at a the hands of capital and state, would also likely inspire public large scale outrage and support. But it wouldn’t be likely to be quite so unanimous, without the victims being so compatible in presentation with the overall dominant political and economic ideology as the POMs sharing and representing as they do the aspirations of small business owning.

We can see such a lack of media consensus in relation to existing works, the response to films about people fleeing climate catastrophe, war and poverty to come to the UK maybe. These sometimes cut through too. But they are not universally accepted by audiences. They are swiftly countered. Articles debates etc. The media is ready, should one which inspires too strong a sense of solidarity land, to strike back.

Apparently those people more recently migrating, just like the chronically ill amongst us of long duration here are also too much of a burden on the healthcare, social-care and social security systems.

So no, I don’t think a hard hitting well put together piece of drama would come anywhere close to putting any of us into to the position in public perception or gain the same near across the board media sympathy as wronged Post Office Managers are now experiencing. It would advance our cause but be met with much high profile counter argument. We don’t have to imagine.

But….
I believe that our true story told to a skilled storyteller will break the spell cast over us by the incantations of malevolent spirits.


I do hope this moment of public recognition yields rapid and meaningful reparations for the POM’s. They have waited too long. It’s heartbreaking that even when relief comes, we know some will not be here to receive this.

Edit: Apologies for the long reply here. I’ve been thinking about the media reaction to this story v others on and off for about ten years now, I guess it just tumbled out of my brain.

 

I’m sorry I haven’t managed to read all of this thread so apologies if I’m repeating what has been said.

Someone on Twitter pointed out that there was a TV film made about ME/CFS in 1993 called Wide-eyed and Legless starring Julie Walter, Jim Broadbent, Sian Thomas and Thora Hird: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide-Eyed_and_Legless

From Wikipedia:

I’ve not seen it so I don’t know if it was any good.

 

I think the injustices that people with ME/CFS have been subjected to is perfect for good drama – in fact there are so many different ways it could be done, the difficulty for me (if I was less unwell) would be in deciding what to leave out.

Complex narratives are ideal for high-quality drama series.

If I was writing a drama I think I would centre it around Tom Kindlon and those why have collaborated with him which led to the new NICE Guideline etc. The battle isn’t yet won (that could be series 2) but it is a classic David v Goliath story. Alem’s story alone would make a compelling drama. Same with Bob and probably everyone else.

To me the chief villain is obvious. That he is personable and well-liked by many is again ideal for intelligent drama. Many villains in fiction and reality have been popular until their are finally held to account for their actions.

It such a shame that Phil Hammond had a conflict of interest otherwise Private Eye would have been the sort of publication that could have really helped us.

Yes but to me that is what would make the drama so compelling. Patients haven’t been sent to prison but they’ve been sectioned, taken away from their parents, lost careers, marriages, friendships and in many cases their lives.

The irony is that the fictional narrative that everyone bought into was the one that SW spun. A truly awful doctor and scientist but a master storyteller and influencer – that in itself is a perfect theme for drama.

 

I havent followed the thread too ill so apologies if this is already said. But i think its a potential nightmare IN THE EXTREME to try to get anyone interested in a drama at this stage - until we have uncontrovertible proof that ME/CFS is organic.

I think its highly, highly likely that you will end up with a 'success story' or a harassed/abused scientist story. Id be shocked to discover that isnt already being pitched. I really think we need to keep schtum (in this context) until we can prove the Wesselys of this world are wrong. And by 'prove', i mean prove... not the "4000/5000/9000 published papers proving biological abnormalities" line that gets trotted out by a lot of advocates and makes me cringe every time i read it.

Until then it carries a far higher risk of catastrophic harm than benefit IMO

But it will be amazing when can can prove it because the narrative of 'all these kids were taken away from their families because this group's 'research' and power sent all the authorities wrong, is a great story for TV IYAM

The gaslighting angle alone, if you could get someone who is a good enough actor to pull off being as sick as we are.... which will NOT be easy, is TV/Movie gold