Are contemporary documentaries, like C4's 'Benefits Street', providing a public service, or simply reinforcing negative stereotypes to generate a larger audience?
Benefits Street is a TV documentary about the every day struggles of various characters that live in a council housing estate. Ultimately many people accused Channel 4 of misleading the people featured in the documentary in order to create 'poverty porn' which effectively created a lot of noise and controversy, leading to rise in views and popularity of the show.
The typical stereotypes of benefit claimers are far how Channel 4 presents SOME of the characters. However that being said majority of the documentary focused on characters that behave in anti-social manners, drug dealers and general trouble makers. In one episode a drug dealer from a nearby estate was called into court for an assault charge. The character was shown consuming a large amount of prescription pills and travelling to court high; in fact he could barely walk. Channel 4 used music and their editing techniques to ridicule the character and build anger in tax payers as effectively Channel 4 is trying to link this negative image with ALL benefit claimers, which then further creates tension between people who already have an issue with benefit claimers.
Channel 4 fails to inform the public that there are people who claim benefits because of serious circumstances such as disability. There are many people who claim benefits for other reasons, whereas Channel 4 reinforces the idea that those who claim are lazy, they're good for nothing, uneducated and loud. Also the idea that there's a whole road of them as the title reflects, it creates a illusion that there's a large chunk of the UK population that claim benefits where in fact only about 5.8% of the UK population is unemployed and only a fraction of that sample are people who claim benefits.
On the other hand Channel 4 manages to create a positive image on one immigrant family, who refuse to take benefits and instead go around the neighbourhood looking for scrap metal and junk that they can sell and make money from. In that sense Channel 4 tried to banish the stereotype that every immigrant that enters the UK aren't benefiting us by sitting at home and simply 'stealing' money by claiming benefits.
