Unite Community's initiative in bringing together protesters from all over Britain to express misgivings over the Channel 4 Benefits Street programme is a welcome development.

The C4 lash-up wasn't the first of its kind to be broadcast in recent years.

Many other TV production companies have served up similar hatchet jobs on poor people because they know that there is a ready market for such material.

Well-rewarded programming executives living in their comfortable enclaves know nothing of the struggle to survive endured by working-class communities.

They embrace the world view of the political elite, seeing people living on benefits as skivers who can't be bothered to find a job, leaving aside the reality that the capitalist system doesn't provide enough work for all.

The system depends on a reserve army of labour to be maintained as an ever-present threat to those in work.

Condemning a section of the working class to exist on benefits then offers the opportunity to the minority that thrives on exploitation to incite hostility against "work-shy scroungers," pointing to the scale of the social security budget and implying that this is spent to keep layabouts in a state of luxury.

The hostility stirred up has been boundless, with social media comments suggesting that some people pictured in the programme should be put to death.

Do the programme-makers understand the demons unleashed by their work or can they see no further than the ratings generated by supposed controversy?

When C4 was set up three decades ago, its mission statement, laid down in an Act of Parliament, spoke of innovation, diversity, education, range and quality.

Benefits Street substituted misrepresentation, prejudice and shabby acceptance of the lynch-mob hysteria of the pro-Tory tabloid media.

No-one who lives in a working-class area is unaware that shop-lifting and alcohol and drugs abuse take place, but this is far from the whole picture.

Communities help each other out. They go shopping for less mobile neighbours. They take each other's children to school. They keep an eye on vulnerable people living alone. They get together to tackle problems.

There are stories in abundance that could provide heart-warming material for a programme on how people are pulling together in the face of a concerted government-led assault on working-class living standards.

Love Productions, which made Benefits Street, has been accused of having conned residents into co-operating with the company by spinning its aim of making such a programme.

If it could not produce a programme celebrating community resilience because of its determination to expose corruption, a poor Birmingham street wasn't the place to start.

The City of London might be a better bet. How many scandals still await exposure after the 2008 financial implosion and the uninterrupted payment of seven-figure annual bonuses to the sort of people responsible for the banking collapse?

One possible problem is that sticky-fingered bankers are very wealthy and wouldn't hesitate to use the majesty of the law to defend themselves.

As the gutter media has shown on countless occasions, that poses no problem when putting the boot into the people of no property.

Unite has done well to take the issue to the Love Productions office in central London.

The next step could be a silent vigil outside the homes of those responsible for this travesty, just to remind their neighbours who lives close to them.