Complaints against 'sick' TV sketches upheld

TV watchdogs today upheld complaints that a spoof RTÉ news show was poking fun at children dying of leukaemia.

Viewers claimed that two sketches on the late-night satire 'Nightlive' were “sick, utterly offensive and breached all sense of decency”.

In its judgment, the Broadcasting Complaints Commission (BCC) also claimed a fictitious news anchor badgered and bullied a wheelchair-bound boy with an oxygen mask.

“Imagine what it is like for the families of terminally ill children in Temple Street and Crumlin Children’s hospitals,” one angry viewer asked, in a letter to the BCC.

In a sketch about a celebrity charity appeal, 'Nightlive' presenter ’Trevor Corcoran’ tells the cameras that his nephew died of leukaemia 10 years before.

He added: “He never got a chance to see me drive Formula Ford at Mondello or caddy for me at Castleknock’s new golf course.”

The complaint was one of only two upheld, out of a total of 20 adjudicated upon by the BCC in February.

Another viewer complained about a scene which shows a wheelchair-bound young boy with an oxygen mask and hooked up to a drip.

The ’weatherman’ repeatedly tells the boy to utter a catchphrase but he can only stutter and cough.

Describing the sketch, the BCC adds: “An anchorman then enters the scene and proceeds to badger the young sick boy into repeating his catchphrase.”

“The Commission noted that his demeanour and style was aggressive towards the boy, bullying behaviour.

“The other newsroom staff on the show and the boy’s mother intervene to ask the anchor to stop and they tell him he is scaring the boy.

“He continues to badger. One of his closing remarks was ’Do you not want to be me Ben?”’

The BCC said the humour was in poor taste and was likely to cause undue offence.

It said that RTÉ did not exercise due care and the manner and content of the sketch were not appropriate or justifiable.

The BCC agreed the sketch about children with leukaemia was likely to be offensive to a vast number of viewers.

“Such treatment of a child’s death is inappropriate and the manner and context of a child’s death went beyond acceptable standards,” it said.

“The broadcaster did not exercise due care and the manner and content of the sketch were not appropriate or justifiable.”

The complaint was upheld in part with regard to the Code of Programme Standards, 2.1 general community standards & 2.2 on due care.

RTÉ defended Nightlive as a comedy programme which parodies a fictitious news programme and insisted that the joke was really on the shallow, self-centred presenters.

“Some of the parody involves the portrayal of a superficial caring attitude by the presenters of the programme,” said a spokesman.

“In the programme, there was a parody of a charity appeal in which the main presenter appealed to the viewers to support his favourite charity.

“Viewers would have been well aware that the target of the comedy was the presenter himself and not the charity he mentioned.

“This sketch led on to a weather forecast in which a child with a breathing mask was positioned beside the weather forecaster for the purposes of furthering the charity appeal theme.

“In a cynical aside, the presenter indicated towards the child and said that there wouldn’t be any need for a long range weather forecast (implying that the child would die).

“The joke was not at the expense of the child, the joke is at the expense of the uncaring presenter.”

RTÉ said it regretted that this joke offended viewers and added there was no intention to make humour at the expense of the sick child.

In another complaint, BCC said it found that the humorous content of a 'Nightlive' sketch on motorsport drivers ’having a death wish’ was reasonable.

“The BCC could not agree with the submission of the complainant that it was an inappropriate joke about suicide and/or the degradation of road racers.

“On viewing the piece, the Commission was of the opinion that it dealt with the risk-taking aspect of participating in the Isle of Man TT road race in a sarcastic and humorous manner.”