How careful do you have to be? #whitehaven
BBC Radio 4 has come under criticism after broadcasting the Afternoon Play: Six Impossible Things - just a day after the violent tragedy which unfolded on the Cumbrian coast.
The play, which started with gunfire, told the story of a murderous bank-robber pursued by the police. Standard middle-of-the-road fare from R4 and any other day it wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow.
But, in the play the killer threatened one victim that he would ‘blow their face off’, something the Whitehaven killer Derrick Bird actually did to at least 5 of his 12 victims.
ITV were quicker to act, postponing an episode which involved an armed seige. Though replacing it with Harry Hill’s TV Burp will for some, still be quite disturbing.
So do broadcasters have a duty to sanitise their outputs after such an event and should Radio 4 have dropped the play in favour of something gunless and ‘less disturbing’ to their audience?
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