Viewers unimpressed by Panorama episode on “Junk Mail”

BBC's Panorama programme (4 July) has come under fire for its report on the so-called ‘junk mail’ industry.

Viewers expressed their confusion over the programme’s treatment of the issues surrounding scam mail and junk mail through social media platforms, such as Twitter.

Tweeters using the hash tag #panoramamail were quick to point out that the two issues are unrelated – one is a criminal activity, the other is legitimate advertising.

Many more were critical of the programme’s sensationalist tone and challenged the programme’s claim that unwanted and used advertising mail costs the British taxpayer £50 million per year to dispose of.

Critics pointed out that it was a figure extrapolated from Cornwall County Council’s estimated cost of disposal, which was based on landfilling a variety of waste paper not just advertising mail – and is not necessarily typical of other councils across the country.

Others also queried why Cornwall Council is putting recyclable mail into landfill, and that taxpayers should incur no additional cost when there are schemes in place to collect and recycle all forms of waste paper.

The DMA’s Chris Combemale, who was interviewed for the show, said that he was disappointed with the confusion of the issues the programme promised to deal with.

“Junk and scam mail are both challenges our industry must face up to, but I thought it was unfortunate that the programme lumped them all together and tarred our industry with the same brush.

“Scam mail is illegal and plainly wrong. And of course we agree badly targeted, unwanted mail needs to be eliminated. As an industry, we are making progress to tackle both problems.”

Combemale added:

“I was pleased, however, that the programme did carry some facts about the legitimate advertising mail industry, such as the fact that now 76% of all unwanted and used mail is recycled and generates £16bn of sales for UK companies.”