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What’s more “obscene” – Russell Brand or melting ice caps? I sat and watched the headlines on BBC News 24 at 8pm last night. Top story? The fact that “more than 10,000 people have complained” about Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross’s “prank calls” to actor Andrew Sachs on Brand’s Radio 2 show the weekend before last.
I’ve just checked BBC News online and they’re running the same story at the top of the page – accompanied I should say by the most uninformative video clip of Brand getting into his car saying “hare krishna”. It’s a situation so serious that the Prime Minister and various other politicians have been compelled to jump on the bandwagon of moral outrage.
If you dig a bit deeper, you find out that actually, only two people complained about the rude and badly-judged series of phone calls made by Ross and Brand at the time that the show was broadcast on radio and released online as podcast. Actually, those complaints were specifically about the swearing.
Anyone who listens to the show regularly (and yes, I do) knows that Brand flies by the seat of his pants most of the time and certainly doesn’t avoid conversation and behaviour that is “offensive” and “taboo” for many. That’s precisely why one listens to his show!
The truth is that even he knew he’d gone too far this time – not because he’d “offended” 10,000 people who would never normally dream of listening to his show until the Mail on Sunday decided to whip up a moral panic in their pages this weekend – but because Andrew Sachs himself found the incident upsetting. That’s why Brand apologised on air last weekend.
So, my question is: how on earth does this incident constitute top story, headline news?
Earlier yesterday I read another story that I found far more shocking. Satellites have revealed the fact that the thickness of the ice in the Arctic “plummetted” last year – in some areas thinning by as much as 49 cm. This story is currently nestling right down the bottom of BBC News Online’s front page – under the Science & Environment tab. Neither the Daily Mail or the Telegraph cover the story anywhere on their front pages online.
Perhaps you don’t really care about climate change or feel that the ice caps are particularly interesting. How about the economy then? Yesterday data was published which shows that repossessions of peoples homes have increased by 71 per cent in the last 12 months – and that house prices are dropping at a dizzying rate. This story has already dropped off the front page of BBC News Online.
So why do the ill-advised, puerile shenanigans of two radio DJs merit the top slot across the news agenda? Is it just me, or were we not on the brink of financial meltdown just a couple of weeks ago? And doesn’t it matter that there is terrifying evidence that our devastating impact on the planet’s ice-caps is greater than anyone had realised?
If only we could muster the same moral outrage and sense of shock and horror about these issues as we do about a few swear words on the radio. Perhaps we might actually be able to make a real difference to our future.
Image from Flick User Redvers
Am kind of in the same headspace as you on this, though not nearly so eloquent. What on earth are politicians doing even being aware of this, let alone getting involved? Please get on with helping banks give me a consolidation loan big enough to consolidate with, making sure I’m not in negative equity when I need to change mortgage in 2 years’ time and keeping the economy healthy enough to allow my employer to continue to employ me. Shout at the USA until they clean up their act environment-wise and try to ensure they elect a president with a measurable IQ. (Anyone see the Bushisms in the Metro today?) This is just another example of politicians wanting to seem caring, concerned and, at the end of the day, PC and we’ve had quite enough of that and a raft of pointless, costly laws created as a result. The world’s gone mad, obviously, nothing new there, but this is utterly beyond all wotsit.
Ross and Brand have been suspended by the BBC. Looks like the moral guardians have got their bloodletting – which means I’ll just be switching my podcast subscription elsewhere, I guess.
I used this page at the BBC site to “send praise” – as a means of registering how disappointed I would be if Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross fell victim to this nonsense.
Well said.
How can people complain when they haven’t even listened to the show? You’ve hit the nail on teh head with getting people to get some perspective. And anyway, from what I gather he HAS slept with her…