C4 cleared over racist remarks by reality show contestant

Published on Tuesday 19 June 2007 01:04

CHANNEL 4 has been cleared by media watchdogs over racist comments made by a contestant on its reality show Shipwrecked.

Lucy Buchanan, 18, from Edinburgh, outraged viewers when she described black people as "really bad" and declared: "I'm for slavery."

Her comments were broadcast in the opening episode of the series in January. Screened in the same week as the Celebrity Big Brother race row, it prompted 1,453 complaints.

But Ofcom ruled: "There is no requirement that all people who take part in a reality television programme must be shown to only express views which meet generally accepted standards. This would not be a justifiable or proportionate limitation on freedom of expression.

"One of the consequences of reality television is that it can present to viewers attitudes which are not often aired on television, but which are held by an unpredictable range of people.

"The fact that the contestants and many viewers found Lucy Buchanan's views offensive did not mean that Channel 4 was not entitled to broadcast them in context."

The teenager said on the show: "I don't really like fat people. I don't really like really ugly people. I don't like it when foreigners come into our country and they don't take on the British culture and the British values.

"I'm quite for the British Empire and things. I'm for slavery, but that's never going to come back."

Asked by another contestant about her attitude to black people, she said: "I don't know them... from what I've seen, they're really bad."