The bad news is that Ofcom, despite receiving 52 complaints about the programme which I suspect now that all of them relate to the offending segment relating to an Amateur radio operator, have decided not to investigate as per information I gathered from broadcast bulletin #317.
Apparently this did not raise issues warranting investigation but yet it was assessed, if this is so then what are the people at Ofcom smoking? 52 complaints is going to set a lot of alarm bells ringing straight away.
This is a massive blow to Amateur radio and the content in the programme was terribly misleading, and as a result could mean that Amateur radio operators across the UK could now suffer simply by erecting an antenna, even with the right planning permission to do so.
Ofcom have a duty to ensure that misleading content is not broadcast by setting strict rules for broadcasters (which it has done) and if it is it is duty bound to investigate if sufficient complaints are received, 1 complaint would not warrant an investigation as one complaint could be someone being offended by something that clearly is not offensive to everyone else, but 52 complaints, that warrants investigation, and as Ofcom also issue Amateur radio licences then I would imagine that they would want to protect that side of things.
Why ignore 52 complaints, would it take twice as many complaints? 10 times as many? 100 times as many? 1000 times as many, or for every single Amateur radio licence holder to complain before Ofcom investigates? Seriously, this cannot be ignored, misrepresentation of the hobby is damaging to it, Amateur radio is often where radio innovations come from, destroy the hobby and any progress in radio communications can be kissed goodbye.
As I am proud to be an Amateur radio operator I am outraged that Ofcom have just sat back and done nothing, if it's all to do with political correctness, racism, sex and nudity and bad language before 9pm, or a broadcaster breaching the conditions of their license they are quick to act, but with this they have ignored it, it occurred on Channel 5 for goodness sake, which is part of their remit
I can safely say I am very angry about this.
73 de M6RSQ
No comments:
Post a Comment
Due to past abuse and the ongoing issues that left me little choice to reduce time on twitter and IRC I have taken the decision to keep comments disabled indefinitely, apologies for this
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.