PRESS RELEASE: CHANNEL 4 HIT BY ANOTHER INVESTIGATION - My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding

From Howe and Co Solicitors

Following a 3½ month initial investigation, Ofcom today announced that it is to launch an investigation in to channel 4’s flagship series, Big Fat Gypsy Weddings and Thelma’s Gypsy Girls. This is another heavy blow for Channel 4 and possibly the last nail in the coffin for C4’s Gypsy franchise.

Large parts of Channel 4’s Bigger Fatter Gypsier advertising campaign were recently condemned by the Advertising Standards Authority in their hard hitting report of 3 October 2012. The ASA Regulatory Report led to Channel 4’s Chairman (Lord Burns) and Chief Executive (David Abraham) being grilled by the powerful Parliamentary Culture Media and Sport Committee on 16 October 2012. During that hearing channel 4 were forced to apologise to the Traveller and Gypsy Communities and to confirm that one of their senior Executives had been disciplined and ordered to undertake retraining.

Ofcom have ordered Channel 4 to respond to complaints that

People from these communities [Gypsy and Traveller] were unfairly portrayed in an untrue and damaging racially stereotypical manner. The programme presented an unfair negative image of these communities, and especially of Traveller/Gypsy children. The following are particular examples of unfair portrayal:

· People were shown to engage in and endorse the violent sexual assault of female children (“grabbing”) and to regard such behaviour as part of the cultural norm for their communities;

· Girls (both teenagers and the very young) were shown as behaving in a highly sexualised manner, notably through multiple lingering images of girls wearing provocative clothing, standing in provocative poses or dancing in a provocative style;

· Boys and men were almost exclusively shown as being feckless, violent, and/or criminal;

· Children of both sexes were shown as being wildly behaved, uncontrollable, foul-mouthed, illiterate, uneducated, violent and dangerous;

· The views of children from Traveller/Gipsy (sic) communities on important issues were shown as statements which could be relied upon as descriptions of the morals, customs and conduct of entire Traveller/Gipsy (sic) communities, including communities of which the child in question was not a member, for example, making statements which viewers would have understood to have been applicable to both English Traveller and Romany Gypsy communities;

· One contributor to Thelma’s Gypsy Girls, “Shannon”, was routinely shown with sub-titles, suggesting that she did not speak an intelligible form of English.

David Enright, a partner with Howe & Co Solicitors (the solicitors representing the ITMB) and Law Society Solicitor of the Year said:-

“For the second month in a row, Channel 4 stands accused of sexualising Traveller and Gypsy children. Channel 4 has trumpeted these programmes as their flagship productions. If Ofcom concurs with its fellow regulator, the ASA, that Channel 4 have again been guilty of portraying children in a sexualised manner, the consequences for Channel 4 could not be more serious.”

“Ofcom’s decision to investigate Channel 4 is another devastating blow to their reputation as a national public service broadcaster. The matters that Ofcom are investigating are of the most serious nature, engaging as they do, complaints that Channel 4 has portrayed “..the violent sexual assault of female children” as “as part of the cultural norm ”; And “Girls (both teenagers and the very young) were shown as behaving in a highly sexualised manner, notably through multiple lingering images of girls wearing provocative clothing, standing in provocative poses or dancing in a provocative style”. In the view of most right minded people, Channel 4’s Gypsy franchise is now morally toxic”