The Kyle and Jackie O breakfast show this morning hooked a 14-year-old girl up to a lie detector test and let her mother ask her questions about school, drugs and sex. The girl admitted on air (in some of the most excruciating radio ever heard) that she had been raped at the age of 12. Whilst Kyle's idiotic response was "Right ... And is that the only experience you have had?", Jackie O did try to save face with the offer of counseling and by quickly pulling the plug on the segment.
The segment can be heard
here (without names).
Commercial radio is well known for its 'do anything, try anything' approach to win the ratings - Judith Lucy wrote an excellent
article a few years ago for
The Age about her short stint on
Today FM in Sydney and the ludicrous ideas thrown around for competitions and segments;
The idea was 'celebrity sperm' and the concept was that you would get a celebrity to donate their sperm (the example they used was Guy Sebastian, because we all know how much self-proclaimed virgins like chucking their semen around), and the woman who won the competition would get to impregnate herself. I am not making this up.
The thing is, this child is not being properly cared for by her parent/guardian. Her mother stated on air that the girl had not received counseling and that the mother herself only became aware of the 'incident' a few months ago - this also insinuates that the alleged rape had not been reported and that there has so far been no follow up.
What kind of mother signs a disclaimer to hook her daughter up to a lie detector and talk about sex and drugs on the radio? What kind of radio station pays money - and surely there was money involved - to a woman of clearly low intelligence who has an obvious dysfunctional relationship with her child to basically fight with her daughter on air?
It all comes down to the issue of popular culture and the lower classes. The only people (besides self-obsessed egomaniacs) willing to lose their dignity on television or radio are low income earners or people who can't fully understand the consequences of their actions. Look at
Big Brother - the house was basically full of bogans and half-wits, the people we see on
Today Tonight and
A Current Affair are always from low socio-economic areas - and therefore more willing to 'sell their story' for a quick buck.
So here we have a bogan mother selling her 14-year-old daughter to a commercial station to be humiliated on the airwaves. Do we expect much more?
The station (including Kyle and Jackie O) is at fault - under no circumstances should a minor have been put on air to talk about participating in illegal behaviour (drugs and underage drinking/sex). The mother is a complete f#cking idiot - but ultimately the fault lies with the station who should know better.
On the issue of the alleged rape and the child not being properly cared for - DOCS can figure that one out.
* Thanks to Jess McGuire at Defamer for a great post about the incident.
