If you were watching the BAFTA Film Awards on the BBC and thought you heard something that definitely wasn’t in the script, your ears weren’t playing tricks on you. The BBC has admitted that broadcasting a racial slur was a “genuine mistake,” which is the corporate way of saying someone really dropped the ball in the editing suite.
The shout came from John Davidson, a Tourette’s campaigner who was there to celebrate the film I Swear, which is actually based on his life. Unfortunately, Davidson had an involuntary tic while Sinners stars Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo were on stage. The BBC, despite having a two hour delay to catch exactly this sort of thing, somehow let the slur slip through to the final broadcast and onto iPlayer.
The “One Out of Two” Rule
According to BBC Director General Tim Davie, the team in the broadcast truck actually did catch a second slur about ten minutes later and edited that one out perfectly. However, they apparently missed the first one entirely. When reports started coming in that a slur had been heard, the crew essentially said, “Don’t worry, we already bleeped that,” not realising there were actually two separate incidents.
It is a bit like cleaning half your house and then being shocked that the guests noticed the pile of laundry in the kitchen.
“Trauma Triggering” and Silent Slurs
The fallout has been, predictably, messy:
- The Presenters: Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo have been praised for their “incredible dignity,” but Lindo admitted he wished someone from BAFTA had actually spoken to them after it happened.
- The Host: Alan Cumming described the night as “trauma triggering” and felt the audience and guests were let down by the decision making.
- The Campaigner: Davidson himself is “deeply mortified” and pointed out that he actually shouted about ten different offensive words that night, but the media has only focused on the N-word.
Learning the Hard Way
The BBC says it is “learning lessons,” which is what they said after a similar mess at Glastonbury last year. They even had extra staff on shift to prevent this, which makes the fact it still happened even more embarrassing…. Whatever!
While Tourette’s is a complex condition and the tics are involuntary, the real question is why the BBC’s “fail safe” systems failed so spectacularly. It stayed on iPlayer until Monday morning, giving plenty of time for social media to do what it does best: get very, very angry.
At the end of the day, a night meant to celebrate cinema was overshadowed by a broadcast error that should have been caught by anyone with a pair of headphones and a “delete” key.
Related topic: Entertainment
