Ofcom: No Big Brother kangaroo court

Broadcasting watchdog Ofcom will not conduct a “kangaroo court” over the row over comments made on Celebrity Big Brother, chief executive Ed Richards told delegates at a media conference today.

Mr Richards was asked what action his organisation would be taking following accusations of racism in the Channel 4 programme after his keynote speech at the Oxford Media Convention.

He said: “I felt sure someone would ask me this question, so I’ve checked up and we now have 25,000 complaints, which is comfortably our UK record.”

He said that Ofcom was taking the issue “seriously” but said: “The last thing I’m going to do is sit here and give you my personal opinion.”

The programme was being monitored, he said, and if the organisation decides to take any action it will do so “under due process”.

He said: “I’m not going to conduct a kangaroo court. One can think of other circumstances when people have rushed to judgment and repented at leisure. We will write to Channel 4 in the next couple of weeks and they will respond within a few weeks of that letter.”

He said the broadcasters had a responsibility to “ensure they stay within the code” but he would not comment on any sanctions the programme might face because “we are not in that position at the moment”.

He’d earlier been speaking about the pressing need for the broadcast industry to respond to the development of the digital age. He said: “We mustn’t be scared of this. Sometimes we have got to look forward and make a judgment on the way the world is going.”

He told delegates that the same “boldness” was needed in the creation of a new digital media settlement as was employed in the establishment of analogue services so many years ago.