Keep showing 'shock' shows says BBC chief

The BBC's director of television is to call on broadcasters to stand firm against attacks over the screening of controversial programmes. It follows the furore that surrounded Jerry Springer - The Opera and the row brewing over a miners' strike drama tonight.

In a speech to St Anne's College, Oxford, this evening, director of television Jana Bennett will say broadcasters face "more pressure than at any time since the Eighties".

Referring to the record 49,000 complaints received over the Springer show, she will argue: "It is now easy for relatively small numbers of protesters to organise what may appear to be mass protests."

Caving in to that kind of pressure is a "slippery slope" to restricting of freedom of expression, she says.

It comes as BBC1 prepares to screen Faith, a film about the effect on families of the 1984-1985 miners' strike, attacked by the Tories as "wholly partial and one-sided".