The German version of the reality show Big Brother has run into trouble after one of its contestants told a series of offensive jokes about Jews on live national television, the broadcaster said on Wednesday.
The head of pay-TV service Premiere, Georg Kofler, fired two employees who allowed the scene to be broadcast on October 2 after he learned about the incident in the daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung on Tuesday.
The candidate in question, an Italian-born waiter named Michele from the northern German city of Hamburg, told three anti-Semitic jokes on the patio of the Big Brother house while on camera, a commercial TV station that also broadcasts the show, RTL II, said on Wednesday.
”Michele was sternly warned and threatened with being kicked out,” the spokesperson said.
Viewers, however, took matters into their own hands and voted Michele out of the show last week.
The Bavarian state media authority (BLM), which is responsible for RTL II, told the Sueddeutsche Zeitung that the incident was classified as a ”violation of human dignity” — illegal in Germany.
Verena Weigand, a youth protection official at the BLM, said it marked a new low in reality television ”when something like this can be broadcast”.
Kofler told the newspaper that Premiere will nevertheless continue to show the programme live because about 50 000 viewers subscribe to Big Brother.
He added, however, that only a few dozen people had been watching the offensive scene because it was broadcast late at night. — Sapa-AFP