Carte Blanche loses its nerve?

Apologies to anyone who may have suffered through a few minutes of Idols in the expectation of the Sax Appeal story being featured on Carte Blanche. Plus, of course, the suffering involved in watching the (mostly) silly stories they did feature. I spoke with the director of the show on Friday, and everything seemed on track and ready for broadcast. I’ll call him tomorrow, and provide any updates in comments to this post.

So what happened? They could simply have thought that the story wasn’t interesting enough for a national audience, which would be unfortunate – and probably wrong – but at least not sinister. The possibilities that worry one, of course, are producers pulling the show for fear of offending some part of the market, and even worse, pressure being applied by an interested party (UCT, for example) in order to not fan the flames any further.

Either way, it’s a pity that this story may need to be kept alive, rather than staying alive simply because a broader range of people care to discuss it.

By Jacques Rousseau

Jacques Rousseau teaches critical thinking and ethics at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, and is the founder and director of the Free Society Institute, a non-profit organisation promoting secular humanism and scientific reasoning.