Gaunt To The Dogs
The media press today is full of news about Jon Gaunt’s sacking from national talk station Talk Sport. In a nutshell, during an interview on air about Redbrige Council’s plans to ban placing foster children with parents who smoke (indoors, outdoors or anywhere else for that matter), Gaunt called the council official "a nazi". All hell broke loose and the station received 48 complaints. Yes, 48 complaints from a recorded audience of around 2.5 million.
Gaunt, who spent time in care as a child, subsequently apologised - saying that he’d really meant to say "health nazi" instead of just plain old "nazi". Too late. Talk Sport carried out an internal enquiry and Gaunt was gone.
Now, whether Jon Gaunt’s confrontational style of radio is your bag or not, I think the bigger issue here is whether making a remark like that really should be a sackable offence. Since when did broadcasters have to be so gushingly polite (ergo: disingenuous) to everyone, all of the time? If the popular media can’t take public servants to task over questionable social and political policies, using popular language or otherwise, who the hell can? OK, so the guy might have been offended by the slang - big deal. He’s an adult - he’ll get over it. We all have to at some time or another. It’s called life.
Was he really suggesting that the official in question was a long-lost member of Hitler’s Third Reich elite? Even the simplest of idiots could work that one out. Gaunt was merely voicing the frustrations of thousands of intelligent and fair-minded folk across the nation. But no, in the curiously British territory of Listener World - in which everyone lives in a warm, cosy bubble with no sharp edges; where nobody ever gets angry or frustrated; or says anything nasty and nothing bad ever happens - such remarks are clearly treason.
It all leaves me wondering whatever happened to free speech. And incidentally, since when did everyone in Britain become so ridiculously earnest? Surely, anyone can find offence in almost anything if they try hard enough. So does this mean broadcasters can only have numbed-out conversations about nothing in particular now, for fear of upsetting somebody somewhere down the line? If so, we might as well pack up now and forget the whole notion of free and democratic exchange.
Sticks and stones. Sticks and stones.
Tags: Freedom, Jon Gaunt, Radio, Talk Sport