Wednesday, 7 June 2017

Letter in response to job application


Dear to whom it may concern

As I was recently job-hunting, I came across your Job application for the position of digital video production producer and if i were to obtain this job then i hope that the contract would have confidentiality clasues as well as exclusivity clauses as well.

I could see was that it states two things that are against the equality act (2010), “male/female (aged below 30)”. In particular, for this one it relates to the age discrimination as it states “The Equality Act 2010 includes provisions that ban age discrimination against adults in the provision of services and public functions”. In your contract, it asks of someone aged under 30 years of age, which is discrimination to ages 31 and above so clearing the age requirements would be a wise decision. For the second breach it goes towards the “Religious views” section, it states that you must be of Christian religious views, and to “promote the ideals of the Christian faith and try to encourage young people to further contact for help and guidance” it is against the equality act. In particular the religion or belief section. Only accepting people of a certain religious belief and to turn down people due to their beliefs is wrong and against the act, so changing this would stop the breaching of the equality act. As well as the liability of employees is questionable due to the powerful topic that is being discussed which is “Date rape”, meeting/discussing the topic with these rape victims and rapists may be a scarring experience for either the person applying for the job or the interviewees. So maybe the brief could be changed to a different topic or have support such as counsellors or such on hand to assist with the creation of the documentary for the interviewer and interviewee. Also since the person is not employed by the company. Liabilities are not available for the individual.

Furthermore, I wish to discuss the content that will be shown on the short documentary video that could be ethically wrong such as the representation of individuals and groups as well as the triggering re-enactments that will be filmed for this documentary. As it states in the contract only male offenders and female victims. This shows in the documentary that only males can be offenders and not offenders. Vice versa with females, as this does not show the truth of how rape occurs. As well as depicting women as weak victims and males as abusers and criminals. As mentioned in your brief the documentary will include “re-enactments, dramatizations” of course this will be very triggering for a vast number of people who may have experienced rape and having young people who they would relate to and talking about their rape experiences may cause mass hysteria of enraged parents and also some parents may not want their childs experiences recorded down and released to the public for all to hear.

As well as the issues discussed above there is the legal issues such as protection of under 18s and harm and offense. As it states in the Ofcom code “Programmes must not include material (whether in individual programmes or in programmes taken together) which, taking into account the context, condones or glamorises violent, dangerous or seriously antisocial behaviour and is likely to encourage others to copy such behaviour.” This means that any re-enactments that are shown are to be mild and not fully shown in case it breaches the Ofcom code. Then as it says regarding under 18s “Due care must be taken over the physical and emotional welfare and dignity of people under 18 taking part in programmes, irrespective of their parents' consent.” As I mentioned recently earlier on in the letter interviewing with under 18s may be emotionally scarring for them so additional support by the company for this would be a good thing to have. I believe that this documentary would be viewed as obscene because it would go against the Obscene Publications Act 1959. This documentary would receive a 15 rating from the BBFC due to its scarring content and touchy subject, also no one under 15 would learn about this however there may be instances in which they are shown for educational purposes as the BBFC states " It is not actually illegal for schools to show BBFC-rated videos, DVDs or Blu-rays to its pupils of any age,we would, however, strongly discourage such a practice unless (a) the children in question are only a year or so below the age stated on the certificate, and (b) there is a serious educational purpose to showing the recording." Finally, I wish to discuss the part where it says it needs a “popular music soundtrack that will appeal to the target audience”. since the only funds we get is £20 I believe that it is not enough to acquire copyright claims on these tracks since any “popular” music today is part of an intellectual property and must be paid for in order to be used as well as that some people that use copyrighted music might have an advantage against the people who don't in this job task.

Yours sincerely

Lochlan Morrison

No comments:

Post a Comment