Response to a complaint

There were some who felt that the "Famous, Rich and Jobless" programme gave some very helpful free publicity to Emma Harrison and A4e. At least one person made a formal complaint to the BBC about it, and has passed on the interesting response he got:

"I understand that you have concerns regarding what you believe was one particular company being promoted.
We've discussed your concerns with the production team who've confirmed that the programme didn't make reference to A4e in this series at all. We describe Emma as founder of UK's biggest independent employment provider. She is an expert in her field, with direct, first hand experience dealing unemployed people, understanding them and helping them along their way. Her contribution to the programme has nothing to do with A4e and we don't feel the company was promoted in any way. We did film a scene in an A4e office in Wolverhampton, though we did not tell the audience that is was A4e, or suggest it was Emma's company. I hope this addresses your concerns."

(I'm assured that the errors in this were in the original.)

It's true, of course, that the company wasn't mentioned in the programme itself, and they were careful that there was no identification of A4e in the Wolverhampton office shots. But this is disingenuous. All the previews in the press mentioned A4e; they could hardly avoid it. And was it pure coincidence that the day before the first programme went out, Mrs Harrison was a guest on the BBC's "Working Lunch"? Perhaps it was, since in the BBC the right hand often doesn't know what the left hand is doing. But there you have it.