Friday, January 20, 2012

Shameless sex scene played in background during live political debate

A television debate on the future of the Labour Party was disturbed by a sex scene. A naked blonde woman appeared on a monitor in the background of a news discussion on Ed Miliband's leadership of the Labour party on Tuesday night.



The scene, from Channel 4 drama Shameless, appeared on screen for a number of seconds as host John MacKay interviewed Labour blogger Dan Hodges. Mr Hodges, a critic of Mr Miliband's leadership, was in ITN's London studio and was debating with shadow Scottish minister Willie Bain on STV's Scotland Tonight programme.

The broadcaster apologised for the mistake after Paul Traynor, a viewer, made a formal complaint. Mr Traynor said: “Is this really what we’ve come to expect of Scottish journalism? Someone should explain why, while watching the political debate with John Mackay about Ed Miliband, some irresponsible employee decided to watch porn in the studio while live on TV.”


YouTube link.

A spokesman for the channel said: "We hope viewers weren't distracted by the unexpected content." A channel source said: "Nobody even spotted the scene until we received a complaint and played back the video. It’s unfortunate but in a busy newsroom we have monitors showing the various TV channels. The show was on after the watershed but we will try not to let it happen again.”

1 comment:

Gareth said...

"“Is this really what we’ve come to expect of Scottish journalism? Someone should explain why, while watching the political debate with John Mackay about Ed Miliband, some irresponsible employee decided to watch porn in the studio while live on TV.”"

Oh FFS somebody needs to grow up a little and stop being such an attention whore. Porn? It was a scene from a mainstream dramam, not porn. And since the show was on well after the watershed I don't think the complaint holds any water.

There are a lot more disturbing things on the news than a tiny indistinct image of a couple having sex.