The time has come to strip the BBC of its status as a public service broadcaster, according to the independent think-tank Civitas. A programme broadcast on 5 October 2005 called 'Little Kinsey' manifested such a distortion of its source material that we can no longer depend upon the integrity of the BBC's factual programmes.

'Little Kinsey' was part of the 'Lost Decade' season, focusing on issues relevant to the period 1945-55. Its central argument was that the restrained attitudes towards sexual activity which would have been considered as typical of the era were hypocritical, that men and women were commonly adulterous, that family life was frequently unhappy, that many men used prostitutes and that homosexual activity was common.

'Little Kinsey' claimed to be based on a survey carried out by Mass Observation in 1949 in imitation of the famous Kinsey Report on sexual behaviour, published in the USA in 1948. However, the Kinsey Report was an attempt to investigate sexual behaviour, whereas the M-O survey only looked at sexual attitudes (with the exception of a very small sub-set), a difference that was made clear in the preface to Mass Observation's report which stated that: 'It cannot be too emphatically stated that this is not an attempt to do a British Kinsey Report'.

'Little Kinsey' made great play of the fact that this was a 'secret archive' that had 'remained buried for more than 50 years'. This is how it was expressed on the BBC news website:

'The Kinsey Report of 1948 famously lifted the lid on American sexual behaviour. But when a similar study was conducted in Britain the following year, the findings were so outrageous… they were instantly swept under the carpet; banished to the archives of a university. Only now, more than 50 years on, have the results come to light, revealed in a new BBC programme. The findings show that the prim and proper façade of post-war Britain hid some remarkable truths about sexual attitudes and experience.'

In fact, the archive, now housed at the University of Sussex, showed no such thing: it showed a society in which most people were still very conservative in their attitudes. Nor do official statistics back up the lurid picture painted by the BBC. Here is a short list of points showing how research findings were stood on their heads to present a picture that the programme makers found more congenial than the facts:

• Mass Observation's (M-O) 1949 Survey: high
• BBC's version of M-O's 1949 Survey: low

• Survey: low
• BBC: high

• Survey: 58 per cent
• BBC: not dealt with

• Survey: 1 in 100
• BBC: 1 in 9

• Survey: low
• BBC: high

• Survey: low
• BBC: high

• Survey: hardly mentioned
• BBC: strongly featured

• Survey: didn't ask
• BBC: 1 in 3 maternities
• Official statistics: 1 in 8 maternities

In spite of the dramatic claims made by the BBC, the archive was never secret. The M-O archive was deposited in the library of the University of Sussex in 1970 and has been available to researchers since then. It was not 'buried' or 'banished'. Furthermore, it was extensively covered at the time over a period of four weeks in 1949 by the Sunday Pictorial, a popular mass circulation Sunday paper. The Sunday Pictorial coverage was fair and accurate - unlike the BBC's. As Norman Dennis, the author of the Civitas report remarks:

'One of the most disturbing features of BBC4's treatment of the M-O survey is the enormous decline it reveals in the standards of journalistic and academic integrity of the BBC in 2005 as compared with those of a popular Sunday newspaper in 1949.'

The photographs and captions which accompanied the Sunday Pictorial coverage, reproduced in Norman Dennis's article in the Civitas Review, give some idea of the restraint and reticence which most people displayed towards sexual activity in 1949:

'Walking with arms around each other's waist is considered to be wrong in many British towns… Necking in the park: a common enough scene in London and other big cities. But some towns would be shocked, for all boy-and-girl behaviour in public must be restrained.'

According to Norman Dennis, Director of Community Studies at Civitas:

'The way in which documentary evidence was used to give an impression that was almost the reverse, on every important point, of the actual findings of the Mass Observation 1949 survey must call into question the status of the BBC. Its receipt of the license fee indicates that the BBC is felt to be a trustworthy public service broadcaster (PSB). However, as I have shown in my report on "Little Kinsey", a mass circulation Sunday paper in 1949 was more accurate and scrupulous in every way. It is time to end the PSB status of the BBC.'

'Little Kinsey' was made for the BBC by Testimony Films with Dr Hera Cook, Lecturer in Modern History at the University of Birmingham, as consultant.

For more information ring:

Norman Dennis 0191 514 1181

Robert Whelan 020 7799 6677

Read the Full Report (PDF)