Complaints about armed reporter and swear song upheld by BCC

COMPLAINTS against Newstalk for sending a reporter to a psychiatric day hospital with knives in her bag and against Today FM for broadcasting a pop song called F**k You, have been upheld by the Broadcasting Complaints Commission (BCC).

The complaint against Newstalk’s Lunchtime with Eamon Keane, claimed that a report which involved the entry of a Newstalk reporter, Samantha Barry, into an acute day centre at St Anne’s Psychiatric Hospital carrying knives in her bag was “unfair, lacked balance and misrepresented the function of a psychiatric day hospital”.

Prof David Meagher, who made the complaint on behalf of the hospital, claimed the report did not take into account that a community day hospital is a different institution to a high-security unit.