Wed 4 Apr 2012 In: New Zealand Daily News View at Wayback View at NDHA
The Edge's breakfast hosts, JJ Feeney, Mike Puru and Dom Harvey The Broadcasting Standards Authority has declined to uphold a complaint about a text read out on radio station The Edge that “Dom, your song was so gay I’m pretty sure I just got AIDS from listening to it”. The Authority says that while “some listeners would have considered the connection made between homosexuals and AIDS to be offensive and in poor taste”, in light of The Edge’s target audience and their expectations of content on station, “the potential harm to listeners did not outweigh the broadcaster’s right to freedom of expression”. The BSA adds that it believes the content of the text message was directed at the host’s song and was not intended as a criticism of homosexuality or as an attack against homosexual people. “On balance the content did not reach the threshold necessary to encourage discrimination or denigration against homosexuals as a section of the community,” the decision reads. The text was on The Edge’s breakfast show, which is hosted JJ Feeney, Dominic Harvey and the openly-gay Mike Puru. The text at the centre of the complaint was read out by Harvey after he sang a parody of All I Want for Christmas and the BSA says the other hosts responded to the text with laughter. In 2010 the BSA upheld a complaint against the breakfast show over a song about an outed public figure which included the lines she “wanted to go rug munching” and she “got sick of dicks”.
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Wednesday, 4th April 2012 - 9:29am