Different countries have different broadcasting standards, but now there’s a somewhat bizarre internal row brewing over at the BBC.

It’s one thing to block out bare breasts in a segment, but it’s quite another to blur out the cleavage line, in fear that it may offend viewers in more conservative African countries.

Exactly who made the call is a point of contention, but here’s what the Guardian reports:

The corporation’s world news team travelled to Nairobi to interview Glamour Pam – who describes herself as an interior designer, makeup artist and Kenyan social media star – for a documentary entitled Fake Me: Living for Likes as part of the corporation’s week of coverage of fake news around the world.

But the BBC Africa documentary, which looked at how people portray themselves differently on social media, was edited because of concerns about adverse reaction in some of the more conservative African countries where it was shown, prompting a debate at the BBC about whether the corporation should be censoring women’s bodies.

“The decision to deal with Pam’s cleavage was made at senior editorial level at BBC Africa,” said one internal email discussing the incident and justifying the decision.

According to somebody with inside knowledge of how the decision played out, it was a panicked call that was much debated:

The producer of the BBC Africa documentary told colleagues that a decision had been made during filming to “zoom in so we didn’t see her cleavage” but “in some shots, particularly the wide shots, we were unable to do this and so had to blur”…

“The decision was made because of sensitivity thresholds with one of the partners for our She Word programme,” the producer said, referencing the local channels that show the BBC programme in several African countries…

If you want to see the blurring in action, skip to the 6:15 mark below:

I only watched 90 seconds, and it’s 90 seconds of my life that I’ll never get back.

I wish they had blurred the whole show out, and if I hear ‘on fleek’ one more time I’m going to become physically ill.

[source:guardian]