The Jeremy Kyle show was funded by the British government- why?
As the dust settles on the set of the Jeremy Kyle show, important conversations about the underlying issues of this type of TV — where guests with various financial, substance and stability problems battle it out with one another in front of a jeering audience — have come to the fore. We have heard the show referred to as ‘bear baiting’, ‘poverty porn’ and mental illness exploitation, and all of these things it was. But the Jeremy Kyle show also represented something more insidious, something found at the confluence of entertainment, psychological priming and political agenda. Mentioned as a quick comment in Carole Cadwalladhr’s 2008 piece on the show’s danger is to me its most damning association — that the Jeremy Kyle Show was sponsored by funds that came directly from the British government.
From its beginning in 2005, a major sponsor of the Jeremy Kyle show was Learndirect, at the time a government-funded agency which sponsored the show to the tune of £500,000 a year. Learndirect, now owned by Lloyds Banking Group, was a New Labour initiative with the stated aim of improving adult education and employability through technical skills training and apprenticeships. Their slogan is “inspiring people to raise their potential”. So, why on earth would a government agency which claims to help broaden people’s horizons be funding a daytime tabloid TV show whose participants, and often viewers, are stereotyped as delinquent, lazy, scroungers?
The most obvious reason for financial sponsorship is mutual gain. It perhaps isn’t too much of a stretch to suggest that the Jeremy Kyle show served the purpose that the political leadership wanted it to. That it forwarded a particular perspective of the unemployed and underemployed that was useful to policymakers, and that it did so in a way that seemed harmless — pure trash tv entertainment. Entertainment that was purposefully designed to bolster a worldview where class is intrinsically linked to worth, hardship is worthy of derision and spectacle more important than truth.
At the time, Learndirect was a large provider of mandatory workfare for benefits claimants, part of the welfare reforms that began taking hold from the early 2000s with the aim of reducing spending by deterring claims on social security. As analysed by Dr Anne Daguerre and Dr David Etherington in a study of welfare changes in 2011, in line with cuts to social security arises
“A political need to increase the stigma attached to benefit claim. It is in this context that social security is increasingly portrayed as an illegitimate burden on society as a whole”.
What does this have to do with Jeremy Kyle? Well, arguably the two things Kyle does best on his show is characterise participants as irrational and illegitimate, a spectacle to laugh at and a burden on us all. It places participants beyond understanding or empathy, literally stigmatising people for years to come. This serves the function of solidifying stereotypes of the disdained ‘underclass’ that is the base of Britain’s unyielding class structure, justifying moves to shunt support. These aren’t vulnerable people now; they’re loud, drunken, violent and stupid. Get them to work! But first, mock them on the telly.
Learndirect dropped its sponsorship of the Jeremy Kyle show after the now-famous ruling by Judge Alen Berg in which he referred to it as “a human form of bear baiting”. They cited reputational reasons for ceasing support for the show, though I wonder what great reputation the show had been upholding in the first place. However, in 2008 the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) considered commissioning another show fronted by Kyle, with the upbeat title “Jeremy Kyle Gets People Working”. With the Jeremy Kyle show now three years old, and not a stranger to scandal, government officials absolutely knew what sort of spectacle he led. Yet, they nevertheless thought him a good candidate to lead a program tackling unemployment. Confirming talks with ITV, a spokeswoman for the DWP said:
“We want to use our communications as effectively and efficiently as possible to motivate and support people into work.” How ‘motivating’ and ‘supportive’ Kyle’s track record showed him to be is certainly debatable. It isn’t inconceivable to guess what attitude towards the unemployed Kyle would be forwarding, but my guess is that it was precisely the perspective the DWP would have known and trusted him to provide.
If anything underlines just how insidious this sort of programming is, consider the fact that government funding also went to a very similar predecessor of Jeremy Kyle — Trisha. From House of Commons Hansard records, we see that Learndirect also directly sponsored Trisha back in 2003. Styled after America’s Jerry Springer show, Trisha also focused on the relationship, drug and personal problems of Britain’s ‘underclass’, and did so in the familiar mocking spectacle that Jeremy Kyle would later adopt. The similarities between Jeremy Kyle and Trisha are undeniable, and their premises are transparent. Their goals–other than brash entertainment–are questionable, and the fact that they received government funding is quite terrifyingly Machiavellian.
When people talk about the demonisation of the working class, programs like these are just the tip of the iceberg, and official support for them should ring alarm bells about who is making policy and why. The demonisation of the working class isn’t just fun tv; it leads to people dying after being declared fit for work, it leads to homelessness, depression, addiction, suicide. It is punching down in the most fundamental sense. Thank god Jeremy Kyle’s gone, but there are so many more dangerous caricatures on screens. It’s time to turn them all off and focus our gaze back up.
