Legal Research

Complaint bandwagon - hop on

By scott

It looks like Ofcom will be dragged into the media frenzy that has been caused by Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand leaving phone messages for actor Andrew Sach’s (still best known for playing Manuel in Fawlty Towers). It seems likely that when they do that the BBC will get their fingers rapped, and no doubt Ross and Brand still have some flack to come from the BBC Trust, although perhaps not as much as the person in production team/management that thought it a good idea not to cut the phone messages out of the pre-recorded programme before broadcast.

Anyway, if Ofcom moves at its usual speed, do not expect anything to happen on this for at least 6 months.

For me the most interesting thing is the number of complaints.

After the show was broadcast the BBC received TWO complaints about Jonathan Ross swearing: “He fucked your granddaughter”. In the last few days as the story has grown, the number of complaints has apparently risen to close to 5,000. How many of these people ‘heard’ the show? The two that complained about the swearing at the time would be my guess, and therefore they are the only two whose complaints should be heard. This is not to say Ofcom should not look at if any other aspect of the code was breached by the broadcast, just that the complaints of people informed by what they read in the press should be ignored, discounted, and binned.

Full post as published by Information Overload on October 28, 2008 (boomark / email).