“A Christian group has lost its High Court battle to prosecute the BBC’s director general over the screening of Jerry Springer - The Opera, in 2005.”
BBC News, 5th December 2007
Source: www.bbc.co.uk
Categories
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It is astonishing that the BBC should feel comfortable with a legal decision in this case. The law could not take into consideration the important question of social ethics, which the BBC ought to have been concerned about. Why should there be corporations that have a privileged immunity in the area of freedom of speech? True freedom of speech is not the ability to say what we like for the principle is always limited to freedom of responsible speech (There are boundaries concerning slander, incitement to violence and so on). Why should any corporation be above the law? Indeed, how is it that a modern public broadcasting company is so destitute of corporate responsibility objectives in this area that it is prepared to hide behind immunity from prosecution rather than respect the views of a significant section of our community? Surely the BBC, of all organizations, recognizes that in a just society, all parties are to be accounted equal before the law. Private sector corporations (including even newspapers) have to respect ethical limits on free speech. Why should public bodies hide from accountability behind special privileges? Should the BBC not be setting an example of corporate responsibility with respect to religious consciences, irrespective of its legal immunity, instead of intimidating the public from seeking to call it to account? To hide behind law will not justify corporate behaviour as moral. The corporation needs to wake up to responsible freedom of speech and set a good example instead of disregarding the religious consciences of tens of thousands of its listeners.