Certain TV programmes directed at children have provoked outrage from the public. Gillian Farquhar reports
RECENT complaints lodged with the Broadcasting Complaints Commission of South Africa (BCCSA) have once again raised the controversial issue of who or what dictates the parameters of programme content for child viewers.
Some of the most serious complaints received by the BCCSA involved “obscene” or “shocking” viewing for children and teenagers, with producers and advertisers expressing conflicting views on what is acceptable and what is not.
Most producers interviewed by the Mail & Guardian, whose programmes have been hauled before the BCCSA for being unfriendly towards children, argue that youngsters should not be shielded from the realities of the country.
In contrast, advertisers have argued that broadcasting rules should be more stringent where children are involved, adding that content often affected advertising revenue. Clients, say advertisers, are particularly choosy when it comes to buying advertising time around controversial programmes which target children.
The BCCSA’s latest findings, in response to a public complaint on obscene programming during time scheduled for children, was that the “direct use of crude language for intercourse and oral sex on a programme for teenagers between 5.30 and 6pm” was unacceptable.
But whether this decision, and the precedent it may set, is in the best interests of those it is supposed to protect, or whether it is just a harbinger from South Africa’s repressed past, remains unclear.
The programme Limits Unlimited recently came under fire from the BCCSA. Broadcast on SABC 2 in September, the programme featured a documentary on child prostitution in Johannesburg and focused on prostitutes as young as 15 years old in Rosebank and Hillbrow sex shops.
Crude language involving “offending words” was used by one of the young interviewees and a letter of complaint was speedily dispatched to the BCCSA.
The letter, which smacked of rigid Calvinist morality, said “the morals of society were being seriously eroded by such permissiveness” and that the programme should have been broadcast later in the evening.
SABC manager of transmission planning, Kobus van den Berg, defended both the inclusion of the crude language and the time slot. He said the aim of the programme was to show teenagers the personal devastation and corruption that was the inevitable result of this lifestyle. Hearing a child speak in this way conveyed the message that prostitution was a bleak, harsh, futureless “occupation” for someone who is still a child.
“Censoring the real language used would have killed the impact of the message, while changing the time slot would have missed the target audience,” he said.
But Saatchi & Saatchi, Klerck & Barrett media director Todd Wilson said the “F- word”, as in most Western countries, should be blocked out on free-to-air TV before 8.00pm. This time restriction would avoid exposing the pre-teen age group to crude footage and language and therefore will not encourage its use.
Child psychologist Dr Anne Marie Novello disagrees. “Protecting children from all aspects of reality is not always in their best interests. Exposure to strong language does not necessarily increase its use in the same way that exposure to drugs does not naturally lead to using them,” she said.
Co-ordinator of the Cape Town Sex Workers Education and Advocacy Task Force (Sweat), Shane Petzer, dismissed the complaints of bad language and indecency as the mouthings of “right-wing Christian fundamentalists” who were now conveniently targeting television after failing in their anti-gay and anti-abortion drives.
“The F-word is used by children in playgrounds,” he said, adding that the extent of child prostitution in South Africa has been blown out of proportion by the media and the public. There also exists a widespread public denial that children have sexual feelings, he said.
Limits Unlimited executive producer Sam Nakedi said it was the role of the public broadcaster to show the public the “whole truth of the society we live in”. Furthermore, he said, the youth needed exposure on air to controversial views.
Inside Information, a youth actuality programme broadcast on SABC 2 during October at 2.30pm, certainly led to controversy. It screened an interview with a sangoma who said he murdered children and used their body parts in rituals.
The BCCSA, after receiving a complaint, found the programme content “too disturbing” for pre-teenagers to watch and thus unacceptable for afternoon viewing.
Commissioning editor Brenda Kali said the programme was aimed at raising awareness of a danger that was a reality for the majority of pre-teenage children in the country. She said this objective had to be put above “offending the sensitivity of privileged viewers”, adding that children themselves chose the topics for Inside Information.
But Ogilvy & Mather media director Yvonne Johnston disagreed with Kali on “raising awareness”.
Johnston felt that advertising could be affected as “advertisers would probably not want to be associated with that type of editorial content”.
Wilson concurred that advertisers would probably want to avoid this type of programme. Research has shown that audience recall of commercials is likely to be poor during shock viewing. The broadcaster has to take responsibility for informing ad agencies if the content of programmes are likely to be controversial for the advertising market, he said.
According to a BCCSA representative, the committee will soon meet to clarify more precisely in its Code of Conduct what “indecent” or “obscene” broadcasting amounts to and will take the criteria of the new Films and Publications Act as guidelines.