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Legal Media
Former TalkSporter can take OfCom ruling to judicial review
By CMU Editorial | Published on Thursday 28 January 2010
One from the radio courts rather than the pop courts now. Former TalkSport presenter Jon Gaunt has been told he has an “arguable case” to fight an OfCom ruling against him on human rights grounds.
As previously reported, media regulator OfCom ruled Gaunt had breached broadcasting codes when, during a heated interview on the national talk station, he called the Head Of Children’s Services at Redbridge Council, one Michael Stark, a “nazi”, a “health nazi” and an “ignorant pig” over plans to ban smokers from fostering children. TalkSport had already fired Gaunt over the incident ten days after the interview, they having received numerous listener complaints in addition to the 53 formal complaints made to OfCom.
Gaunt, now working on The Sun’s online radio service, claims that calling a council official a “nazi” or “ignorant pig” is not in itself offensive enough to be deemed contravening broadcasting decency codes. His legal rep Gavin Millar QC says: “In the 21st century, in a heated debate with a politician, to call them an ignorant pig is not the stuff of an intervention by a regulator. It’s not offensive material of the sort”.
OfCom argued that the Human Rights Act was not relevant in this case, in which the government agency was just exercising its duty to enforce broadcasting rules. But a judge yesterday ruled there was an argument that OfCom had breached Gaunt’s right to freedom of expression, and that OfCom’s ruling could therefore be given a full judicial review.
Gaunt is presumably pursuing this action in a bid to cut the regulator down to size. TalkSport had fired him before the regulator had even ruled on the incident, and the presenter is now seemingly happy with his new job at SunTalk which, as an internet service, is not regulated by OfCom. Commenting on this case, Gaunt told reporters: “We don’t need OfCom, we have got an off switch. We have a draconian, unelected, expensive-to-run quango of do-gooders who can stand there and say ‘this is good taste and decency’. We don’t need them”.
