Brass Eye: Press views

Chris Morris and Doon MacKichan in Brass Eye

Press views on the controversial episode of Chris Morris's Brass Eye, which spoofed the media's reaction to paedophiles.

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The Evening Standard

Why do politicians feel obliged to become involved in rows about television programmes? Some, perhaps many, people found Channel 4's spoof documentary on paedophilia tasteless or repugnant.

Yet it seems wildly inappropriate for the home secretary as well as the culture secretary to become involved in the controversy.

This is only a TV programme, yet David Blunkett has interrupted his holiday to denounce it. Ms Tessa Jowell has demanded to see those responsible.

Yet mass-circulation tabloid newspapers are daily doing things far worse, without provoking any interruption to their editors' invitations to Chequers from nice Mr Tony Blair.

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Anthony O'Hear, professor of philosophy, writing in the Daily Mail

The Brass Eye program was sick, stupid and offensive. It manipulated public figures, who presumably thought that they were doing something to counteract the tide of child abuse.

It was also deeply unfunny. It should never have been transmitted, and in a civilised society would not have been.

But, of course it has been defended by bigwigs from Channel 4. No doubt defenders of the programme would say my sense of humour is lacking.

Further, my "stuffy" attitude to free speech shows that I am out of touch with the changes in society and the national mood over the past two or three decades.

Over the entrance to the BBC there is an inscription, put up in 1931, which prays that "all things foul may be banished hence" and that people should "incline their ear to whatsoever things are lovely and honest and tread the path of virtue and wisdom".

Michael Jackson would no doubt condemn this exhortation as paternalistic, along with any attempt on behalf of the rest of us to suggest the boundaries of what might be permissible on television.

To which one can only reply that if you want to know what happens when you have no standards, just look at Channel 4.

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The Daily Telegraph

It is worth pointing out, if only for the record, that Brass Eye was a parody, not of paedophilia, but of the low-grade investigative programmes that seem to dominate evening television: the kind where self-important presenters set out to "expose" some vice or other, while knowing all the time that their appeal rests on the audience's salacious interest in that vice.

It should not be necessary to point out that paedophilia is monstrous. The desire to protect children lies deep in our genetic code, and is one of the strongest emotions in human experience.

The truly bizarre thing is that so many politicians and commentators should feel the need to flaunt their dislike of child abuse: that was Brass Eye's point, and one that has been amply vindicated by the subsequent kafuffle.

It is no surprise that such a distinction should be lost on, say, the News of The World, which yesterday called for "Channel Filth" to be "kicked off air" (while simultaneously devoting its first five pages to details of real life sex in the Big Brother house).

Nor, sadly, is it surprising to see Labour politicians lining up with the tabloids: Tony Blair, after all, led the way with his absurd attack on Glenn Hoddle two-and-a-half years ago. But, surprising or not, it is distasteful to watch ministers of the Crown demeaning themselves in this way.

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Tony Parsons writing in The Mirror

[There has been] predictable outrage at the Channel 4 spoof documentary on paedophilia. I thought it was the funniest show I've seen all year.

A one-off edition of Brass Eye, the programme wasn't making fun of children who are abused or the adults who protect them.

The people Chris Morris's satire tore apart were all those smug, self-righteous celebrities who believe that a little bit of fame suddenly makes you Mother Teresa.

It wasn't just Phil Collins sitting there in a T-shirt with "Nonce Sense" emblazoned across it.

It was the newsreader who wanted to "rip the brains out" of a cartoon dog who was suspected of promoting paedophilia. The starlet posing with a pair of gloves that were said to enable perverts to molest children who got too close to their computer screens.

Apart from inane idiots, the real targets were the idiots who persecuted one poor woman because they couldn't tell the difference between a paedophile and a paediatrician.

They deserve to be targets.

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The Independent

It should come as no surprise that a television programme satirising a press overreaction should provoke a further press overreaction.

What is alarming is the extent to which the government seems to be lending its support to calls for Channel 4 to apologise for last week's Brass Eye, which would imply that the channel was wrong to broadcast the programme.

That would amount to a kind of retrospective censorship, and is also likely to inhibit broadcasters in future. Michael Jackson, the chief executive of Channel 4, is quite right not only to refuse to apologise but to have responded to the fuss by running a repeat of the programme.

The fact that the furore satirised by Brass Eye concerned the sexual abuse of children made the programme tasteless in the extreme.

If you like that kind of sick humour, it was also very funny. That would be no defence, of course, if the programme had condoned paedophilia or if it had caused distress which could not be alleviated by the use of the off button. It did neither.

Once again, this government's illiberal instincts have been exposed. The trouble is that it is easier for ministers to try to intimidate television companies that transmit offensive programmes than it is to tackle the complex psycho-social causes of the sexual abuse of minors.

Complaining about satire will do nothing to protect children.