Can audiences ever be wrong?

At the BBC Editor’s blog Rod McK­en­zie asks if the Ross and Brand case is an open and shut case?

When we star­ted cov­er­ing the story on News­beat — the audi­ence response was run­ning two-to-one in Ross’s and Brand’s favour — now it’s swelled to six-to-one.

His point is that the younger audi­ences his broad­casts serve don’t share the moral out­rage of older audi­ences. And in draw­ing atten­tion to that dif­fer­ence of opin­ion Rod frames the issue as one of audi­ence out­rage and approval, with the implic­a­tion that there is no ‘moral’ pos­i­tion here, it’s all rel­at­ive. It isn’t.

If a senior exec doesn’t feel this is an ‘open and shut’ case then there really is a broad edit­or­ial ‘cul­tural’ issue to be addressed. The debate for Rod is how his adher­ence to the code works in con­trast to the expect­a­tions of his audience.

For Brand and Ross were clearly in breach of the broad­cast­ing code and the BBC’s own guidelines. These codes are designed to pro­tect the pub­lic. Not in the sense of guard­ing their ears and eyes, but to offer them pro­tec­tion. It is designed to pro­tect eld­erly act­ors and their grand­chil­dren from on-air humi­li­ation and bullying.

This is not a clash of gen­er­a­tions. We might well decide as a soci­ety that we are happy to unleash the Brands and Rosses of the world to pick on whom­so­ever they choose. But we haven’t yet.

And if Radio 1 listen­ers feel so strongly, per­haps they’d like to get together to cam­paign for the code to be changed.

Tagged as: BBC, Jonathan Ross, Radio 1, Rod McKenzie, Russell Brand