“How Is This OK To Broadcast?” Game Show Slammed After Contestant Answers With Homophobic Slur

“How Is This OK To Broadcast?” Game Show Slammed After Contestant Answers With Homophobic Slur
B&T Magazine
By B&T Magazine



UK game show Countdown is in apology mode after a contestant on Monday afternoon’s program answered a question with the homophobic slur “poofter”.

The premise of the program is bascially like Scrabble, where contestants conjure a word from a series of letters.

Countdown hopeful Matt Gould was asked to read aloud his answer from the letters, “A, O, O, E, D, R, P, F, T”, when he began giggling.

His seven-letter answer was a “rude word,” he told the show’s host Anne Robinson. “I know [it] is in the dictionary, ‘poofter’,” he said.

Robinson didn’t react to the slur and instead moved the program swiftly on, calling for the other contestant Roy Gerrish to reveal his answer: “Proofed.”

Viewers were left wondering why the broadcaster, Channel 4, aired the segment in the first place and didn’t have it edited out and, worse, why the incident was simply shrugged off by the show’s hosts.

Check out the unfortunate incident below:

Journalist Scott Bryan led the outrage, tweeting: “Sorry to go serious on something quite trivial but as someone who was called a ‘p***fter’ by homophobes on a daily basis, why on earth is Countdown allowing it to be said cheerfully as an answer on daytime television?”

He added: “Yes, I know it is in the dictionary. But having been at the receiving end of that word as abuse for years (along with f****ot), then hearing it casually as an answer on a quiz show … Jesus Christ.”

Writer Adam Kay added: “I don’t think it’s trivial. If the best word someone could come up with is a word in the dictionary that would have the channel taken off the air, I’m sure they’d replay the round. Not sure this should be treated as any different.”

BBC Radio 1 presenter Dean McCullough said: “Immediately not this.”

In a statement, a Channel 4 spokesperson apologised, saying: “The airing of the word was an error of judgement. It does not align with our values and we apologise for any offence caused.”

While outraged viewers took to Twitter to ask why the segment aired or wasn’t re-shot, or, at the very least, why producers didn’t simply bleep out the offending word.

 

 

 

 

 




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Countdown homophobia TV reporter

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