Five media industry insiders were asked this question in today's MediaGuardian section. On Saturday BBC1 and BBC2 were required to carry Ofcom rulings critical of Live Earth broadcasts last summer, as the watchdog found the BBC guilty of allowing "repeated" swearing. Among the offenders were Madonna, Ricky Gervais, Chris Rock and Phil Collins.
Nick Ferrari, LBC breakfast presenter
Yes, I bloody well do. I have a seven-second dump facility at LBC which means we can stop anything offensive or libellous, and we use it. Five Live, which I used to work for, do not, which staggers me. The BBC seem to think a delay spoils being live, but I don't. There is a greater tolerance than there used to be among the media and chattering classes for bad language, but not among decent normal people, and we have to respect them.
Stephen Whittle, ex-director, Broadcasting Standards Commission
It depends who you are. Young men and women living in cities will think nothing of lyrics with strong sexual language. But if they have younger siblings or are parents themselves they will take a different view. In the end, it is a matter of manners. We use different words in different places and with different people. The street is not the same as the pub or the workplace or the home. The rules are clear: "Thou shalt not swear before the watershed." The trade-off is greater freedom for adults after 9pm.
Nicky Campbell, presenter, Five Live breakfast and Watchdog
I was watching Gordon Ramsay and he opened the show by saying "Not a fucking chicken in sight." Maybe I'm getting old, but I turned it off within 10 minutes. It just seemed overwrought and heavy-handed. I'm not prudish about the language - I think Stephen Fry swears beautifully, and Richard Pryor in concert makes swearing sound like WB Yeats.
Breakfast in particular is a very sensitive time for the ears, and anything more than "damn" has to be properly contextualised with editorial reasons for it. I think there is more tolerance now than there used to be. Imagine someone coming on the TV at 9 o'clock 10 years ago and saying "Not a fucking chicken in sight." It would be front page news.
Geoffrey Perkins, comedy producer
The BBC's 1947 guidelines prohibited just about anything that you might want to say or think of as funny. So we've come a long way, by reflecting on TV the way people actually talk and the things they talk about. As for Madonna and Live Earth ... I once had to ask Billy Connolly just before he went out at the Wembley Nelson Mandela concert, which was going out live on television at 3pm, not to swear. He promptly strode on and said "Hello Wembley, how the fuck are you". I'm guessing something like that happened with Madonna.
Swearing has become less of a deal on TV, but it's still quite important on radio. It's a terribly intimate medium and talks to people one-to-one. When John Lennon died I was working in Ireland for RTE Radio 2. We wanted to play Working Class Hero but couldn't record it in advance. So the studio manager said he would bleep it live but his mother rang up just at the wrong moment to ask what he wanted for his tea. He bleeped lots of words out but not the offending one. Someone rang up to ask: "I noticed you left the fucking in, but what was it you bleeped out?"
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