{"id":5726,"date":"2016-04-19T11:27:14","date_gmt":"2016-04-19T10:27:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/?p=5726"},"modified":"2016-04-19T11:27:14","modified_gmt":"2016-04-19T10:27:14","slug":"satire-parliament-and-dennis-skinner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/2016\/04\/satire-parliament-and-dennis-skinner\/","title":{"rendered":"Satire, Parliament and Dennis Skinner"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Commons\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Last week Labour stalwart Dennis Skinner was ejected from the House of Commons for the rest of the Parliamentary day for calling the Prime Minister “Dodgy Dave” during his statement on his father’s off-shore affairs to Parliament. The Speaker, John Bercow, didn’t like it, and Skinner was forced to leave. <\/p>\n

Skinner regularly entertains with his witty and acerbic comments, so this wasn’t out of character. In this instance, Skinner had a particular interest in the subject and had confronted Cameron on it previously.<\/p>\n

What’s interesting is how the news was later reported beyond the day’s news reports.<\/p>\n

On Friday, Have I Got News For You<\/a> covered it, pointing out that Parliamentary rules prevented them from showing clips on a satirical TV programme. They instead used an “artist’s impression” as shown above. <\/p>\n

Now I’ve written about this issue before – here in 2009<\/a>, and again in 2011<\/a>. <\/p>\n

As the licences to use material from Parliamentary coverage make<\/a> clear<\/a>:<\/p>\n

no extracts of Parliamentary proceedings may be used in any light entertainment programme or in a programme of political satire; <\/em><\/p>\n

This is despite some changes in copyright legislation which, to my non lawyer’s eyes, would seem to be at odds with them.<\/p>\n

So it was slightly surprising to sit down and watch Monday night’s Last Week Tonight with John Oliver on Sky Atlantic, originally transmitted by HBO on Sunday evening, and see footage of Commons, lifted from the BBC’s website, and used by Oliver for, well, satirical purposes! <\/p>\n

\"skinner\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Of course in the US, they have separate copyright rules and restrictions, and they don’t have to adhere to UK rules. Fair Use probably applies, and so the footage was used. And programmes like this, The Daily Show and many others, regularly use C-SPAN coverage of US government business to illustrate their stories. Only the Supreme Court remains off limits to cameras (Oliver has notably used a “court” of dogs<\/a> to illustrate exchanges, alongside audio recordings which are allowed).<\/p>\n

I was<\/em> slightly surprised to see that Sky Atlantic didn’t edit that segment before UK broadcast however, since it does seem that they’re in violation of Parliamentary rules. I wouldn’t be surprised if a trimmed down version is used for any rebroadcasts, although at time of writing the full unexpurgated episode is available on Sky Go.<\/p>\n

It’s a ridiculous rule of course, and the point is that the footage is widely available. <\/p>\n

Last month Rupa Huq MP, sister-in-law to Charlie Brooker, requested that it was lifted, but her request was denied<\/a> by Chris Grayling MP, leader of the House of Commons. <\/p>\n

As Brooker is quoted is the Telegraph as saying, “”Have I Got News For You can’t use clips from the House of Commons, whereas This Week can – with funny music dubbed on top.”<\/p>\n

And of course, you can very easily view the footage, including Skinner calling Cameron “Dodgy Dave” on at least two occasions before he was required to leave the Commons by the Speaker for “Disorderly Conduct.” Here it is on the BBC website for example.<\/a> <\/p>\n

I can even go ahead and make an animated GIF of it!<\/p>\n

\"giphy\"<\/a><\/p>\n

But for goodness sake, don’t let the footage end up on a satirical television programme in the UK. Whatever would happen then?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week Labour stalwart Dennis Skinner was ejected from the House of Commons for the rest of the Parliamentary day for calling the Prime Minister “Dodgy Dave” during his statement on his father’s off-shore affairs to Parliament. The Speaker, John Bercow, didn’t like it, and Skinner was forced to leave. Skinner regularly entertains with his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,10,7],"tags":[236,664,276,556],"class_list":["post-5726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-politics","category-tv","tag-media-2","tag-parliament","tag-politics-2","tag-tv"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5726"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5726\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5730,"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5726\/revisions\/5730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}