A COMMUNITY RADIO station in London has apologised after a nine-year-old DJ played a rap song which contained 53 swear words.

The incident, broadcast during Children’s Hour on Betar Bangla Radio, happened back in February and attracted one complaint to UK radio and TV watchdog Ofcom.

The report into the incident said that at 2pm on the day, a show was broadcast on the station – which serves the Bengali community in east London – presented by a child.

The presenter and their guest spent the slot trading jokes, puzzles and riddles, before a caller phoned in to request the rap song My Mind Is Gone by Meek Mill.

Which was then played.

According to Ofcom, the song has:

• 14 instances of “fuck” or “fucking”
• 10 instances of “shit”
• 28 instances of the n-word
• 1 instance of “bitch”

Ofcom deemed the playing of the song broke two rules on offensive language when children are listening and considered the participation of the children as warranting further investigation.

Response

In their response, Betar Bangla expressed its “sincere apologies” for what it called a “very unfortunate lapse”.

They said that an older teenager had either jokingly or maliciously asked the children to play the song.

The adult who was due to be supervising the children was taking a bathroom and prayer break at the time. He was unaware of the incident until the Ofcom complaint.

There was a parent present, but they were outside the studio and many do not have the sufficient level of English to understand some of the content.

In conclusion, Betar Bangla said it does its “absolute best on very limited means to give an essential service to all of our community”.

They added that the content “flew over the heads” of the children.

Decision

Ofcom found that the station broke the rules on broadcasting material with potentially offensive language and found the station to have failed in its child protection obligations.

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