What is this thing you Earthmen call the off button?
Media Watch Watch reports that once again the self appointed guardians of Britain’s morality are preparing to march upon the offices of Channel 4, brandishing pitchforks and torches, to slay the porn peddling ogres and demons that lurk within:
“Massah” John Beyer, the Black and White Minstrels fan who likens himself to St Paul, told The Independent on Sunday,
Channel 4 is unquestionably pushing the boundaries and they are doing it quite deliberately. I guess that Channel 4 will be up there bidding for the television rights to 9 Songs along with all the other pornography channels. I just feel that Channel 4 is now beyond control, yet the regulator seems unable and unwilling to have anything to say about what Channel 4 is doing. I just don’t know what can be done to stop this collapse of standards.
Maybe he should join Christian Voice?
One of MMW’s regular Christian canticles, one “Dr Christopher Shell”, has responded to this story (as he does to most posts on the site), with the following lucid comment:
…it is a perfectly possible scenario that Channel 4 will be deaf to listeners and (in practice) simply do whatever they want. In this particular scenario, the radical approach is the natural and logical one.
Set aside the fact that Channel 4 are subject to the censors and regulators that govern all broadcast content, and can’t simply “do whatever they want”. More important is the idea that if a television channel is showing content that one might find offensive, and that the “natural and logical” response is surely to not watch? It is usually a fairly simple matter to change the channel, or turn off altogether; perhaps to do some soul-endangering activity like Aikido (I was informed many years ago that the “heathen” Eastern Arts open up ones soul to the Devil, despite Aikido being founded on the principles of love and harmony). I believe that what I watch on television is up to me, not to some arrogant, pompous, self important moral watchdog.
Channel 5 recently showed a series of programmes about plastic surgery, which I knew I would find disturbing and unpleasant. Rather than sit through them and subsequently write to Ofcom to vent my outrage, I exercised my rights as an individual and chose not to watch. Indeed the BBC, ITV, and Channel 4 show prime time soap operas that I find relentlessly depressing and upsetting (though Hollyoaks does have some hot girls in it), but as a thinking human being, I choose not to watch. I do not set out to stop anyone else from watching them simply because I find these programmes unpleasant, not even my wife.
I think it is about time the likes of John Beyer found more to fill their days, so they might have less time to sit and be outraged by the content of the television schedules. I’m sure some fresh air and a bit of physical activity would do them a world of good.