Celebrity Big brother – We could use PR for the greater good
January 24th, 2007Hi all,
Welcome to my first blog ever! Its quite daunting actually. Well here in the UK it has snowed for the first time this year. Wah-hey. Well not so Wah-hey when I have to do a 4 hour drive in this snow later on today.
So I was watching celebrity Big Brother this morning, its everywhere, you cant miss it. For those of you not in the UK, you may have heard about this as it has made international news! For those of you who are not aware of the furore being caused in the Big brother house at the moment, there has been a massive race row. The row started after thousands of viewers of the reality TV show complained of racism and bullying towards Indian born Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty, who was the target of racist slurs directed at her by fellow housemates Jade Goody (reality TV star), Danielle Lloyd (Model and W.A.G) and Jo O’Meara( Former member of pop band S club 7).
Channel 4 (the producers of the show) have had huge coverage. Indeed it has bought to light some very serious issues. This show has definitely highlighted the need for understanding and some sort of inter-cultural relations. All countries have citizens who are from different races and backgrounds and we all need to understand each other’s cultures to avoid the situations that have arisen on celebrity Big Brother. Now I know Channel 4’s PR will be working over-time, as well as Jade Goody’s (“the main bully”) , but it leads me to wonder whether the PR could be better invested somewhere else, maybe something like multi-cultural relations? The bullying and racism stemmed from what seemed to be cultural ignorance. I feel this is a golden opportunity for the UK government to build a strong Public campaign building awareness and engaging the public about these types of issues. Lets put PR to good use and use it to help bring about cultural understanding everywhere!
January 25th, 2007 at 5:00 am
A great first blog.
An intelligent article like this is a terrific response to the racism, bigotry and ignorance that shames us all and that no one should have to put up with.