“I blame the parents…”

At it’s best, there is nothing that compares to the brilliance that is radio. Working in radio was my first proper job, and despite moving into new media eight years ago I remain a total radio enthusiast. Not in the taking-photos-of-transmitters-and-collecting-jingles variety, but of the fact that radio, above all other mediums, can totally immerse you in an environment or experience. Programmes like From Our Own Correspondent or Simon Mayo or my friend Marsha’s excellent podcast interviews with comedians (I particularly recommend her chats with Andre Vincent and Micky Flanagan) all are ways that stories are told simply and powerfully.

It also appears that at its worse radio can be horrific. I still find it incredible that the biggest media story of last year involved a late night radio programme. However, the Ross/Brand affair is nothing compared to what happened in Australia, where two days ago an even more incredible example of when-radio-goes-bad was broadcast.  The Kyle and Jackie O breakfast show, on 2Day FM, ran a competition where a mother made her 14-year-old daughter undertake a lie-detection test live on air. After some questions about whether she had bunked off school, she is asked whether she had ever had sex. A clearly distressed girl admits she had been raped when she 12. It is horrible car-crash audio.

From a radio producers point of view, I struggle to understand how such a stunt could have been allowed to go on air. The presenters have tried to defend their actions, claiming that’s one of the pitfalls of live radio, but I can not comprehend how they or their producers even let the competition go ahead, let alone allow the mum to ask her daughter about her sexual experience (even if they had no idea the answer would be what it was). Apparently their jobs are not under threat, despite Australian PM Kevin Rudd joining the chorus of criticism [Update.  On Sunday 2nd August, Austereo, owners of 2Day FM, announced that Kyle and Jackie O would be suspended indefinitely as a result of this broadcast.].

Throughout the interview, you get the very real feeling that the daughter doesn’t appear to be a willing participant in the whole saga. Personally, I think there are huge questions the station has to ask about putting participants on air when they actively don’t want to be there; but perhaps the focus needs to be on the mother, who as one commentator described it was willing to “prostitute her daughter for a couple of free concert tickets.” As the daughter says after she admits the rape, and the mother concedes she knew about it, “yet you still asked me the question?”.

And that’s the real horror of this story. Yes the radio station was in the wrong, but it is the mother that really has questions to answer. What kind of parent would put their child through such an ordeal?

Sadly, it’s not the first time that such a thing has happened. A couple of years ago, an six-year old girl in the US had her prize revoked after she had made up a story about her dad being killed in Iraq so she could get some Hannah Montana tickets. Yet it was her mother who made the lies up, saying “We did whatever we could do to win.”

Let’s not forget the parents of Alfie Patten, who were quite happy to sell their son’s “young father” story to the tabloids despite the fact that he wasn’t the father and they should actually have been supporting him rather than running off to the papers.

And for the really sick parents, you need to look no further than the story of Megan Meier, the 13-year-old who committed suicide after an online ‘friend’ turned nasty on her. It turned out that the ‘friend’ was the mother of one of her real friends who wanted to find out what Megan really thought of her daughter. Lori Drew, the mother, was eventually found not-guilty because there was no law in place to cover such action.

None of these stories are anything other than individual examples of where parents go wrong. The vast majority of parents understand their obligations to their children; and would never dream of doing anything like the parents above. And yet, a small minority let them all down.

Isn’t that what they say about teenagers?

PS.  I wrote something very similar a couple of years ago on YPulse.

Image courtesy of aloshbennett. Used under licence.

Tags:2Day FM, alfie patten, Andre Vincent, From Our Own Correspondent, Hannah Montana, Kevin Rudd, Kyle and Jackie O, Lori Drew, Marsha Shandur, Megan Meier, Micky Flanagan, radio, Ross/Brand, Simon Mayo, XFM, YPulse