ITC Upholds Complaints On Language From Hell In ITV Documentary

ITV’s “…from Hell” series of documentaries has fallen foul of the Independent Television Commission (ITC) for language broadcast in an April episode.

The programme Salesmen from Hell attracted 29 complaints from viewers because of language including the sentence, “You walk like a wanker, you talk like a wanker, you dress like a wanker.” The programme was broadcast at 8pm on a Wednesday evening.

The ITC pointed out that there is no prohibition in its programme code against the use of bad language before the watershed, unless the programme is designed specifically for children. An exception is made, however, for “language of the most offensive kind.”

Programme-makers Yorkshire Television said in their defence that offensive language had been ‘bleeped’ out of earlier sequences in the Salesmen from Hell, but that the sentence in question was left in to demonstrate the nastiness of a telephone hate campaign which that part of the programme was focussed on.

Although the ITC programme code does not offer guidance on what constitutes “language of the most offensive kind”, the ITC felt that the high number of viewer complaints “indicated that a significant proportion of viewers had found this usage highly offensive”.

The complaint was upheld, with the regulators concluding that the word could have been bleeped out without great loss of impact, and that the particular item “might have become less unacceptable had it been included in the later stages of the programme, by which time viewers might have become more aware of the rough-edged nature of some of the material”. As it stood, the broadcasting at 8.20pm was deemed unjustified.

ITC: 020 7255 3000