Rihanna buttock-thrusting okayed by TV watchdog

The Daily Mail has egg on its face after Ofcom, the TV watchdog, gave the newspaper an unprecedented rebuke for its coverage of the raunchy dance routines by Rihanna and Christina Aguilera on The X Factor final last December 12.

The Mail had expressed outrage at the "sleazy" show during which Rihanna stripped to a bikini to sing What's My Name while Aguilera and a team of dancers in revealing lingerie performed Burlesque, from the movie of the same name, which she was promoting at the time.

The paper had predicted that the show faced "a big fine" and that ITV would be asked to apologise if it was found to have broken pre-watershed rules which protect children from unsuitable material.

In the event, there is no "big fine" and Ofcom ruled yesterday that the show was not in breach of the pre-watershed code.

Then came the slap on the wrist rebuke for the Daily Mail: Ofcom accused "a daily national newspaper" - they didn't name the Mail, but everyone in the media knows to whom Ofcom was referring - of using photographs that made the routines look more provocative than they really were.

"The newspaper coverage reported on concerns that the performances were too explicit for a family programme, and included a number of still images of the performances," Ofcom said.

"However, from a comparison of the images it is clear that the photographs that were published in the newspaper were significantly more graphic and close-up than the material that had been broadcast in the programme, and had been taken from a different angle to the television cameras. Readers of the newspaper would have... the impression that the programme contained significantly more graphic material than had actually been broadcast."

As a result, the Mail's coverage - not for the first time - encouraged readers to complain about the show. As Ofcom reports, approximately 2,000 of the 2,868 complaints it received about the show were as a result of "the national newspaper's" coverage.

This is not the first time the Daily Mail has whipped up a frenzy over a broadcast of which it disapproved. Most famously, it was a Daily Mail report that drew its readers' attention to "lewd comments" made by Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand when they left messages on Fawlty Towers actor Andrew Sachs's answerphone during a Radio 2 programme broadcast in October 2008.

On that occasion, thousands of complaints came in, resulting in Brand resigning and Ross being taken off air by the BBC for six months. Yet it emerged that the Radio 2 had received only two direct complaints from listeners before the Mail picked up the story.

In declining to castigate ITV for The X Factor show, Ofcom said Rihanna's dance routine had featured "some gentle thrusting of the buttocks" but that this was "in keeping with her performing style".

As for Christina Aguilera's routine, "this appeared to be based on the burlesque-style of dance. This was noticeable with the female dancers seated on chairs opening their legs, kicking their legs up, gently thrusting their buttocks whilst bending over their chairs and leaning onto the chairs to position their buttocks towards the audience."

Although Aguilera's routine was "at the very margin of acceptability" for a pre-watershed show, Ofcom ruled that it was acceptable because of the "context" of her film, Burlesque.

The Mail, needless to say, is not amused by Ofcom's ticking off.
"Thousands of our readers had clearly been incensed by the programme before we carried the pictures," a spokesman said last night. "What we raised was the legitimate question as to whether these scenes were suitable for pre-watershed TV and presented the facts in a fair and reasonable manner." ·