Those who follow me on Twitter (@Gspellchecker) may have noticed my account is currently suspended. I am yet to receive a reason from the powers that be, but I have filed an appeal for it to be lifted whilst I wait. Going from past experience, the turnaround for an official response could be anything between 24 hours to 30 days.
This isn’t the first time I have been suspended. The last time was January 2015, news of which even made The Independent newspaper.
An open letter I blogged back then detailed my thoughts on what I think is going on with Twitter’s suspension process. Unfortunately, not much has changed except to say that I think Twitter’s approach to such matters has worsened rather than improved in the intervening years.
Those who follow me on Twitter (@Gspellchecker) may have noticed my account is currently suspended. I am yet to receive a reason from the powers that be, but I have filed an appeal for it to be lifted whilst I wait. Going from past experience, the turnaround for an official response could be anything between 24 hours to 30 days.
This isn’t the first time I have been suspended. The last time was January 2015, news of which even making The Independent newspaper.
An open letter I blogged back then detailed my thoughts on what I think is going on with Twitter’s suspension process. Unfortunately, not much as changed except to say that I think Twitter’s approach to such matters has worsened rather than improved in the intervening years.
The upcoming release of the Seth Rogan-James Franco comedy caper ‘The Interview’ has been officially canned by Sony Pictures, marking the latest in a series of controversies surrounding the movie, and indeed the studio.
The movie’s fictional plot revolves around an assassination attempt on North Korea’s ‘Supreme Leader’ Kim Jong-un by our aforementioned leads. Here is the film’s synopsis from The Internet Movie Database:
Dave Skylark and producer Aaron Rapoport run the celebrity tabloid show “Skylark Tonight.” When they land an interview with a surprise fan, North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, they are recruited by the CIA to turn their trip to Pyongyang into an assassination mission.
You can view the trailer here, which is still up at the time of posting. As you can see, this is comedic farce at its most potent and obvious. Needless to say, we are not dealing with a sensitive game changing political exposé here. The movie was scheduled for release on Christmas day in the U.S, but its future now hangs precariously in the balance after Sony confirmed they have scrapped all current plans for its release, without indicating when – or if – the movie will even be released at all. Read more
Red Nose Day (Comic Relief) is a biennial UK telethon event, which aims to raise money for charity. The hook is on the promise of entertainment in the form of famous faces ‘doing something funny for money’. It is hoped that this will attract viewers, and hopefully donations along with it. (Our team raised over 10k! Just saying)
Over the years, some incredibly talented, hilarious performers and Lenny Henry have appeared during the TV event to participate in various skits, some live, some pre-recorded, some funny, some cringe-worthy. It doesn’t matter, it’s all for a good cause.
This year, Rowan Atkinson of Blackadder and Mr. Bean notoriety gave his time to appear via a pre-recorded sketch. In the sketch, he appears in character (tongue firmly in cheek) as the ‘New Archbishop of Canterbury’. Rather than provide an exhaustive description of the, in my view, rather tame contents, you can watch it in full below (until the inevitable swooping of BBC Ninjas):
After the initial live broadcast over 2,000 complaints were received, only a quarter of which, were related to the religious content. This prompted the BBC to issue an apology in conjunction with complete removal of the ‘offending’ skit from their online, on demand service, iPlayer.
I pressed the official iPlayer Twitter account for more details regarding their conclusion that the content was so inappropriate as to merit complete removal from its services. They were kind enough to direct me to a pre-existing statement, an excerpt of which, is below:
It was clear from this feedback that the Rowan Atkinson sketch was problematic for a number of different reasons, with many viewers noting the subject matter, the languageused and its placing early in the evening. It is clear to us that this sketch did not translate as we had hoped and as a direct result of viewer feedback we took a swift decision to remove this from BBC iPlayer.
I requested further clarification from the BBC on some key points, but as of yet, I have not received a response.
