CASE NUMBER: 18/2009 – SIMPSON VS MULTICHOICE – BBC LIFESTYLE CHANNEL – WATERSHED

Complaint about alleged offensive and unsuitable contents for children in a promo broadcast before watershed time.   Promo containing alleged violent, disturbing and upsetting scenes.  As far as offensiveness is concerned, the Constitution guarantees freedom of expression, which includes the right to offend within reasonable limits.  The promo contained a very fleeting shot of a spot of blood on the arm of a corpse in a mortuary, which appeared for less than a second. It contained no violence or offensive language.  The Tribunal of the opinion that it was doubtful whether young children would have been able to distinguish the arm with the spot of blood on it as that of a corpse, since the rest of the corpse was not shown and the scene was extremely fleeting.  The Respondent explained that programmes packaged outside South Africa are transmitted directly via satellite and that MultiChoice has no control over the timing or scheduling of promos contained in such programmes, in fact, there is not even an opportunity to view programmes before broadcast.  It was argued that Clause 12 of the Code for Subscription Broadcasters states that licensees must, wherever practicable, avoid material which is unsuitable for children.  It was argued that although the promo was broadcast 30 min before the watershed time, MultiChoice had no control over this and thus a finding of negligence would be unreasonable. MultiChoice has also requested the BBC Lifestyle channel to avoid broadcasting promotional material that may be considered upsetting for children during family viewing time or at least warn the viewers that the images may be offensive to sensitive viewers.  In the light of the lack of control; the measures taken by the broadcaster to address the problem and the fact that the promo was not very explicit, the complaint was not upheld.