Comment: This inexcusable intimidation
Last updated at 11:47 09 January 2005
In a civilised society, threats of violence solve nothing and damage those who make them.
The individuals who have menaced BBC chiefs over their decision to show Jerry Springer - The Opera are just as wrong, and just as misguided, as the intolerant rioters who forced a Birmingham theatre to abandon a controversial play about Sikhism.
Until they resorted to such dishonourable tactics, critics of the broadcasting of the show held the moral advantage.
The BBC's decision to screen this dubious production was highly questionable. Millions of people were dismayed that licence-fee money, compulsorily taken from them, was used to broadcast material that they found deeply offensive.
This inexcusable intimidation undermines that legitimate protest. But it does not put the BBC in the right.
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