Its been a long wait for the BBC to find out how Ofcom was going to punish them after their poor handling of the the Sachs prank phone call controversy however, they have finally agreed on a £150,000 fine.
Oftom say that the BBC had breached the Broadcasting Code twice by airing the incident. The incident was when Russel Brand and Jonathan Ross decided to leave messages on veteran actor Andrew Sach’s phone - which involved Brand boosting about having relations with his grand daughter Georgina Baillie.
The TV watch dog said that the broadcast had “unwarrantably and seriously infringed” the privacy of Sachs and his granddaughter and described the programme as “gratuitously offensive, humiliating and demeaning”.
The BBC said:-
“We accept Ofcom’s findings,”
“As we said last October, this material should never have been broadcast and we apologised unreservedly for that”
“We note that Ofcom has found that senior management acted swiftly to mitigate the offence and damage caused by the breaches of the Code.”
“The BBC has since taken comprehensive action to deal with what were unacceptable failures in editorial judgement and compliance which led to the broadcast.”
As a result of this event, Jonathan Ross was suspended without pay for 12weeks, Russell Brand left his Radio 2 show and station controller Lesley Douglas quit.