According to Monday night’s episode of MediaWatch on ABC, ACMA is pursuing a formal complaint against radio station 6PR for publishing a video of a caning which took place in Malaysia approximately four years ago.
The 6PR website warns readers with two warning messages before they watch the corporal punishment footage, but MediaWatch host Jonathan Holmes says ‘This is on a general-use website. And there’s nothing to stop a child intrigued by the warning clicking through to this.’
Partial screen capture of the 6PR website, 9 March 2009.
In Holmes’ view it should never have been posted in the first place. He says ‘It’s peddling the pornography of violence.’
Whether 6PR is peddling trash or drawing listener attention to an item relevant to on-air debate is a matter of personal opinion. Whether the option for Australian adults to view the footage should be in the hands of an ACMA bureaucrat is of much greater concern.
12 comments
Vanessa says:
Mar 10, 2009
“And there’s nothing to stop a child intrigued by the warning clicking through to this.”
Yes there is. Parenting.
I mean, jeez, I went to see the Watchmen the other night. A MA15+ film. There were plenty of 8-10 year olds in their with their parents, some of which started crying at the gorey scenes.
Bob Bain says:
Mar 10, 2009
Very mild compared to the graphic scenes of violence in Mel Gibson’s film “The Passion of the Christ”.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0335345/
This was shown in public cinemas and if you recall Christians around the globe asked it be re-rated so that children could watch it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Passion_of_the_Christ
The movie was banned in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Bahrain. In Malaysia, government censors initially banned it completely, but after Christian leaders protested, the restriction was lifted, but only for Christian audiences, allowing them to view the film in specially-designated theatres
———-
Certain critics were troubled by the film’s explicitly-detailed violence, and especially cautioned parents to avoid taking their children to the cinema. Although only one sentence in three of the Gospels mentions Jesus’s flogging, and it is unmentioned in the fourth, The Passion of the Christ devotes ten minutes to the portrayal of the flogging. Film critic Roger Ebert, who rated the movie four-out-of-four stars, said in his review:
The movie is 126 minutes long, and I would guess that at least 100 of those minutes, maybe more, are concerned specifically and graphically with the details of the torture and death of Jesus. This is the most violent film I have ever seen
Bob
Sam D says:
Mar 10, 2009
Ouch!
Aileen Wuornos says:
Mar 10, 2009
It’s like these fuckers have never heard of the concept of “taking responsibility for your own actions”
if your child is clicking on that – ask them WHY, what is it that interests them? explain the context. cotton wool has always done more harm than good.
and more importantly, which parents are letting their children surf the net totally unsupervised anyway.?
Aileen Wuornos says:
Mar 10, 2009
oh yeah, not to mention that shit in the video kind of looks like it may be a human rights violation to me.
but i could be wrong.
Kyle says:
Mar 10, 2009
I saw the media watch segment on this and agree that them putting the video on their website was pointless which served no real journalistic purpose and shouldn’t have been published, but I think the warnings were sufficient though and doesn’t really warrant a looking from ACMA.
Mike Zombie says:
Mar 10, 2009
Censoring reality is absolutely sickening. This is what happens in the real world, deal with it. You think taking it down from that particular website is going to stop children from viewing it? As if they can’t just go to Liveleak.com and watch it amongst other disturbing videos. Just because it’s not hosted on an Australia server it doesn’t mean kids are automatically immune. It makes no difference whether its on Liveleak or 6pr.com. It’s about time the government minded it’s own damn business. This country has become a nanny state and I for one am sick to to death of it.
Let parents raise their own kids. The government doesn’t exist to raise your children!
Syd Walker says:
Mar 10, 2009
When will Media Watch show a fraction of the concern it purports to feel about this video for the many real-life victims of Australian foreign policy in Iraq, Afghanistan etc. That policy, after all, was made possible by lies repeatedly told by the ABC, among others in the journalistic ‘profession’ – lies never exposed by Media Watch.
From where I sit, MW is part of the problem, not the solution. Does Mr Holmes thinks he’s done a job of work because ACMA has jumped on this video? Is setting off a moral panic part of MW’s performance criteria?
How pathetic.
Bob Bain says:
Mar 10, 2009
This incident appears to have been documented a couple of years ago at the following URL seemingly based in Australia.
http://www.usp.com.au/fpss/news-asia/news-malaysia101.html
Fri, 03 August 2007
A worldwide condemnation erupted after a video posted on an internet video-sharing website showed a Malaysian prisoner being tortured with a cane.
“The disturbing video, posted on liveleak, showed a naked man strapped to an upright wooden frame, his rear exposed to a uniformed official who lifts a meter-long rattan stick above his head before bringing it down on the prisoner’s buttocks, tearing the flesh with each strike.”
—————-
There are graphic stills seemingly taken from the video and an embedded YouTube video of the incident which can be viewed as an embedded video on the site above, while if you seek to view the video on YouTube directly it is marked as “inaappropriate for minors” and you have to log-in and “verify” your age.
It appears that embedded video subsequnently marked as being “unsuitable for minors” plays with no problems as an embedded video and I assume it’s the responsibility of the webmaster to issue the appropriate warnings – as it appears 6PR have done.
It is seemingly still on YouTube and doesn’t appear to have violated their terms of service.
YouTube video at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eWgYbwNSsU
(posted March 22, 2007 by user at the following URL
http://www.youtube.com/user/iKreeper
Given these facts I would categorise this as an “R” rated video subject to password restrictions and I would assume this is the response that ACMA would determine.
As there have been no complaints regarding the video at the URL above – even though based in Australia I assume ACMA will concentrate only on the 6PR video.
Bob
m says:
Mar 16, 2009
The caning video is extremely distressing (I did not watch all of it), Instead of sanctioning the media that publicise it, sanction the bastards that DO this!
dave says:
Mar 19, 2009
Nothing? Nothing at all? Nothing that begins with a “p” and ends with “arents”?
Simon Veitch says:
Mar 27, 2009
In all honesty I agree that this kind of punishment needs to be stopped, but there is nothing at all the Australian government can do to stop it. So what do they do instead? They try to prevent the video being seen, which of course does no good.
Australia suffers from slower internet speeds as it is than the rest of the world, and now they want to put in this big filter to stop people accessing things and slowing down the internet even more. Why the fuck can’t they just take a stand in better educating parents about online safety of their children. Then the world would be a much safer place.
I know when I was much younger my parents would often keep an eye on what I was doing online. They did the same with my younger brother when he finally went online. Both of us turned out fine, we’re mature, we’re responsible, we know how to be safe online. If another child’s parents refuse to do the same. How is that the childs fault?