BRITAIN: UK media watchdog raps Channel 4 for airing racism

The UK's major media regulator received thousands of complaints for racial slurs against Shilpa Shetty on a network reality show

Times of India
Friday, May 25, 2007

London --- Channel 4, the British terrestrial broadcaster whose reality TV show 'Celebrity Big Brother' made Shilpa Shetty an international 'star' victim of racism, has been given an unprecedented rap on the knuckles for "serious editorial misjudgements" during the controversial January series of the programme. Channel 4 was criticised in the strongest ever condemnation of any British broadcaster for any programme ever by Ofcom, the UK's independent regulator and competition authority for the communications industries.

Ofcom has never before asked a broadcaster to make more than one on-air apology, though it has previously asked for substantial fines as a monetary mea culpa.

Ofcom, which received nearly 46,000 complaints from viewers about the alleged racism Shetty suffered at the hands of three white fellow contestants, said in a decisive ruling that Channel 4 was guilty of breaching the broadcasting code.

After a four-month investigation into the programme, which sparked an international furore and even drew the Indian government and UK's future prime minister Gordon Brown to intervene, Ofcom concluded it was important to subject the broadcaster to statutory sanctions such as three on-air apologies.

In a humiliating putdown for Channel 4, whose boss Andy Duncan had originally dismissed outraged complaints about racism towards Shetty with the breezy argument that 'Celebrity Big Brother' "had hit a nerve that really reflects (British) society at large," the broadcaster will now be forced to air three apologies when it starts the new programme series on Wednesday.

Ofcom said it "takes allegations of racist abuse and bullying on television extremely seriously." The media watchdog's indictment of 'Celebrity Big Brother' comes three months after Shetty went on to British television news bulletins to deny she faced racism.

In post-programme interviews, significantly replayed continuously by British broadcasters on Thursday, Shetty was heard to say over and over she believed Jade Goody displayed a "lack of education, not racism." But Ofcom said in the most serious and startling revelation about 'Celebrity Big Brother' to emerge four months after it aired, that it had explosive and racist unseen footage from the show. The unseen footage included Shetty's tormentors making up and chanting a limerick about the actress, "There once was a house that was happy until that f***ing Paki.." Ofcom said it was able to establish that 'Big Brother' producers knew of the objectionable racist chant at the height of the row over the show. Goody and some of her collaborators in Shetty's racist bullying pop star Jo O'Meara, former 'Miss England' Danielle Lloyd, and Goody's boyfriend, Jack Tweed were summoned by 'Big Brother' to be told "It is clear that this (limerick) was a reference to the racial insult 'Paki'."

Date Posted: 5/25/2007