OH BROTHER, BIG BROTHER, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?

Sydney, July 7 NZPA - Australian Prime Minister John Howard says Big Brother is stupid and should be canned. Many agree, but others say he should back off.

The Channel Ten programme has polarised a nation over a sexual incident that was not screened on television, but was seen over the internet just after 4am last Saturday and subsequently went "viral" on the internet with inboxes bombarded with links to the internet file.

The vulgar term, turkey slap, rocketed into recognition as the result of housemates Michael Cox and Michael Bric holding down fellow contestant Camilla Halliwell and one of them rubbing his crotch in her face.

Halliwell, taken by surprise, described them as mean at the time. The next day when interviewed on screen, she said they "were just mucking around".

Producers axed Cox and Bric.

"I think it is just a question of good taste," said Howard.

"The business community is always saying to me `let us self-regulate'.

"Well, here's a great opportunity for Channel Ten to do a bit of self-regulation and get this stupid programme off the air."

Dominic Knight, a writer for the Sydney Morning Herald, had the alternative view.

He said the incident demonstrated the show's value.

"The original aim of Big Brother was to put ordinary Australians under the microscope, and what we've learned in the past week has been fascinating," he wrote.

"We've learned that a mild form of sexual assault is some blokes' idea of a harmless prank.

"Sexual harassment is still commonplace in our society; rugby league's problems with it have been well documented.

"But you can't sweep something under the carpet when it's appeared on a live internet feed."

He said Big Brother had "reflexively turned the microscope on to the whole of our society".

Big Brother could be crude and tedious, but as a social phenomenon, it had always been fascinating, wrote Knight.

"The politicians in Canberra are supposed to be our representatives, but, as distressing as it may be, the people inside the Big Brother house are far more representative of ordinary Australians."

That's an arguable point, but nobody can deny there are plenty of dimwits in both houses.

One newspaper letter writer, Peter Fyfe, said that in Australia's other reality show, the elected housemates continued to denigrate Aborigines, women, homosexuals, human rights, working folk and Iraqis, on prime time television, on every network, every night.

"On Big Brother, bad behaviour means you get voted out or kicked out, whereas on Why Bother (aka Parliament) it means you get re-elected and perhaps even a seat in the cabinet. Who sets the better example?"

There were some gems among the letters to the editor.

Genevieve Frederiksen wrote to the Herald: "It seems everyone has an opinion on the latest Big Brother antics, but no one has stated the bleeding obvious anyone who watches the Big Brother on the internet at 4am is a turkey in need of a slap."

And Marjorie Biggins in the same paper: "A 21st Century version of hell: trapped for infinity on a cruise ship with the cast of Big Brother."

The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) found that because Channel Ten did not broadcast the footage of the incident on TV, there had been no breach of television codes.

The Government's reaction was to say it would review television regulations, with streaming video over the internet and on mobile phones also coming under scrutiny.

Family First senator Steve Fielding said the assessment by the communications authority was to "give the green light to sex, smut and sleaze".

But The Australian newspaper said regulations were not the answer to the idiocies of reality TV.

It said the incident was foul. "But the proper reaction to such things is to censure, not censor.

"Just because the ACMA and Queensland Police determined that no laws or rules were broken does not mean that new regulations are needed to prevent this sort of thing from happening in the future."

The antics of Big Brother housemates were "never going to be confused for a Mensa meeting", said the newspaper.

"In a fragmented media market, Ten has made a conscious decision to grab the youth audience, which has different sensibilities than many of those currently proposing regulations for reality TV."

The newspaper said that while Mr Howard was right that the current controversy was a great opportunity for Ten to self-regulate and drop Big Brother, "until the show violates any laws, that choice should be left to Ten".