The Daily Mail enjoyed Britain's Got Talent immensely and had a good rummage around in their Scrabble bag of random hype words:
Britain's Got Talent has been hit by a 'huge backlash' [= a few tweets] from viewers after broadcasting a performance from an 11-year-old schoolgirl singing a song about a one night stand, and a 'highly sexualised' [=marginally
sexy] lapdancing performance - all before the 9pm watershed.
The first episode of this year's ITV talent contest, which was shown at 7pm on Saturday night and watched by more than 13 million people, was branded totally unsuitable [= carefully edited for a family audience] by 'outraged
parents' [= Daily Mail hacks].
Contestant Keri Graham, whose performance saw her stripping down to her 'underwear' [=shorts], writhing 'semi-naked' [=modestly costumed] on a chair and 'gyrating on Simon Cowell' [= put a leg over his shoulder], is a professional
stripper.
A second act featured 11-year-old Arixsander Libantino performing a rendition of Jennifer Hudson song One Night Only , which features the lyrics:
You've got one night only,
that's all you have to spare,
let's not pretend to care,
come on, big baby,
come on,
we only have 'til dawn.
The Daily Mail then dragged up half a dozen trivial tweets to justify the 'huge backlash'.
Vivienne Pattison, director of Mediawatch UK said:
Having an 11-year-old girl sing an adult song like this is simply sexualising children. It's incredibly damaging because this show is marketed at primary school children.
ITV appear to have completely ignored the Ofcom guidelines - I don't even know why they put the guidelines out. This kind of thing is not what families want to see.
We are sleepwalking into a situation where pornography is the norm.
A spokesman for ITV said :
Mindful of our family audience, the performance was carefully edited to ensure it was suitably inexplicit.
Ofcom said that it was too early to tell if they had received any complaints from the public.
Update: Independent takes up the Twitter Trawl
16th April 2013. See article
from mediasnoops2.wordpress.com
Dan reports that the Independent is trawling Twitter for complaints about the show. It seems it's not just the Daily Mail and right-wing tabloids which do this.
You would think The Independent would have more sense. Obviously not.
See Britain's Got Talent draws complaints
over lap dance and child singing about one-night stand
from independent.co.uk