Please release your moral rights

The next time you watch a TV documentary, don't necessarily give credit to the director or the editor. The real power has shifted to the legal department, where even the mildest of interviewees' complaints can let nervous lawyers exert control over programme content. As a result, a little-known legal document known as the "release form" has come to control what viewers see.

The release is "a very critical part of making a programme now", according to Chris Shaw, senior programme controller at Channel 5. "People these days have a much clearer notion of their rights - they know they are contributing value to the programme." Even insurers now want to know that the production team has the release forms in order.

But problems crop up regularly. A recent documentary featured a down-and-out alcoholic who was too drunk to sign when the paper was put to him. By the time the lawyers decided that a signed form was needed, the alcoholic had died. The lawyers insisted that his family be informed, and asked for their permission to show the footage. Naturally, the family did not want to remember the bereaved as a souse, and it took weeks of visits and persuasion before the show could be broadcast.

In a series about houses where murders had occurred, an estate agent had allowed the crew to film. Later, the new owners of one of the properties heard about the programme, and tried to take legal action to stop it, on the grounds that they would not have purchased if they had known the house had been a murder scene.

The release does three things. It asserts that the interviewee took part willingly and knew what the programme was about, so that he or she cannot later claim to have been misled. It also ensures that the interviewee gives up all moral rights in the interview - in other words, handing all control to the programme makers, thus ensuring that the programme is cleared for vital foreign sales. Finally, the release is a written guarantee that the interviewee has the right to say everything that is said, and that it is not slanderous.

Many add a further clause in which the interviewees make themselves legally and financially liable if the programme is sued over something they said. A typical release form states that "you agree to indemnify us against all and any costs ... including legal fees... resulting from breach by you of any of the agreements, warranties or undertakings in this agreement".

Because the lawyers now insist on these forms, filmmakers are refusing to invest time and money in a documentary without getting clearance at the beginning. But there are exceptional circumstances. In the game show Make My Day, which has just finished its run on E4 and moves to Channel 4 later this year, the "contestant" is the only one who does not know he is being filmed by hidden cameras. Friends and family win points by steering this person to certain actions. At the end of the show, the winner is given a list of prizes and asked to sign a release. One winner, furious at being tricked, would not sign, and everything stopped while he was sweet-talked; so far, none has refused, or worse, held out for a payoff that reflects the cost of reshooting the entire episode. "However carefully you research the players, there is always a chance they will not be pleased to have been tricked," says one person who worked on the production.

Media lawyer Mark Stephens believes the form's tyranny may have gone too far. "It is a bizarre state of affairs where a lawyer for a broadcaster would advise the broadcaster to accept any restriction at all," he says. "It's a deception being perpetrated with the connivance of the broadcasters where the viewer is completely ignorant of the terms on which the programme is undertaken."

For media veterans, however, the release form is just a part of the game. "These things are standard-form contracts," Neil Hamilton says. "We have seen many hundreds of these things, and we virtually signed (the form for Louis Theroux's documentary) without reading it."

Some lawyers argue that politicians and other public figures should not need to sign the form: they are thought to know the ropes, and the fact that they have taken part is assumed to be a release. But in my experience, making a programme about foxhunting, even a former Conservative parliamentary candidate should be made to sign. Derek Laud, Britain's first black, gay master of the hounds, who came to fame as a member of the Monday Club at a time when that organisation supported repatriation, agreed to defend the sport. We interviewed him in three locations, including a touching moment next to the statue of Oscar Wilde in London. After a flurry of legal letters and a book-length memo detailing who said what to whom, it required a meeting between Laud and the Channel 4 lawyers before the programme went ahead - unchanged.

Nick Rosen directed Carry on Hunting, to be shown on Channel 4 on Saturday night at 1.35am.