Ofcom are not at all impressed with ITV for showing footage of a skydiver crashing to his death in a mid-morning TV broadcast. Tut, tut. And they would have got away with it, had it not been for those pesky regulators.
Meanwhile, long after the watershed the Big Brother contestants continue to get nastier and more callous towards one another.
There was enough moral outrage expressed through various media channels when the reality TV phenomenon first took off that there probably isn't much left to say on the ethics of voyeur TV. In any case, the Observer is avidly following BB6, so probably ought to refrain from pious condemnation. But things do seem to be getting a bit out of hand.
Modern society has undergone some major cosmetic changes since the days of the Roman circus, but homo sapiens remains the same old bloodthirsty animal. I'm sure if there was a way of putting criminals in a pit with angry starving lions and broadcasting it someone would do so and people would pay to watch it. Hey, boxing still does pretty good business.
When BB first started out, an unspoken goal was to record the first live TV sex act. Surely, the next big taboo is televised death. Mortal peril is the flame of shock that successive reality TV formats flutter around like a moth. It's a matter of time before someone constructs the legal and technical means to have someone burned live on screen.
