Talk of the trade: Broadcasting standards shot to hell

WHAT is a broadcasting standard? To put it another way, when was 'hell' last deemed a swear word? The answer is last week, when the Broadcasting Standards Council produced research showing that in a two-week period there were 1,991 cases of bad language, 883 violent acts and 143 scenes depicting sexual activity. But a careful look at the research shows that one person's sex, violence and swearing is another's polite intercourse.

Before the Prime Minister and others become too alarmed at the debilitating influence of TV on society's morals, here are some of the words that were included as examples of bad language: God; almighty; hell; whore (Shakespeare scores badly on all the aforementioned); moron; and cretin (the official bad language category for the last two, according to the BSC, is 'minority abuse/disabled').

Of course, there are unprintable examples, too, but who actually decided, with all the implications for the final results of the research and the future policy emanating from it, that the above words were offensive to viewers? Evidently, the same person who listed under 'violent acts': scratch, sword fight and, intriguingly, crowd control. 'Sexual activity' is also not quite as shocking as the phrase suggests. Sixty per cent of all examples involved kissing, and a further 3 per cent were 'implied' sexual activity, which the researchers helpfully defined as 'galloping horses, waves crashing, etc.'

Andrea Millwood Hargrave, research director at the BSC, says that she based the categories on a national survey on taste and decency. A fear of sword fights must lie deep in the national psyche.