The Racial Hatred Act: Case study 4
- comedy and censorship
- Radio National's Breakfast Program reporter Chris Bullock's story
on the censorship of a racist joke from RN's The Boxseat comedy programComment:
- Chris Bullock on why the breakfast
program team aired the joke when The Boxseat program team chose not to.Please note that none of the reports in the case studies have been the
subject of complaints or queries under the Racial Hatred Act.
Chris Bullock comments on why the breakfast
team aired the joke:
Humour is a looking glass for society and satirists and comedians constantly
cross the boundaries of political correctness. For years, intellectuals
of the right have complained there are no comedians of the right.The result, they say, has been politically correct censorship of topics
like race, sex and religion.The decision not to use Lee Perry's joke on Radio National (The Box
Seat) was an example of this from an organisation (the ABC) that is accused
of being dominated by PC practitioners.The breakfast program producers decided to play the joke in full because
we felt it was essential in a story about censorship for listeners to be
able to make their own judgements.There was some debate about the merits of the original editorial arguments
at The Box Seat ... and we agreed with Libby Douglas that it was the role
of the Box Seat to reflect the range of current performing comedians, for
better or worse.
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