Alex Dyke: BBC Radio Solent DJ allowed to return to airwaves just days after offensive breastfeeding comments
He described breastfeeding as something that was done by women who contribute to Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour
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Your support makes all the difference.A BBC local radio DJ who described breastfeeding as “unnatural” and said it was an activity for “the kind of women” that appear on BBC Radio’s Woman’s Hour has been found in serious breach of the organisation’s editorial standards.
But BBC Radio Solent allowed morning show presenter Alex Dyke, who was suspended following the remarks earlier this year, to return to the airwaves within days of the outburst.
The broadcasting regulator Ofcom found that Dyke’s “highly offensive” comments “stereotyped women who breastfed and were likely to be perceived as misogynistic”.
Finding the broadcaster in “serious breach” of standards, the BBC Trust said the presenter’s outburst “stepped significantly beyond what would have been deemed acceptable by listeners”.
The Alex Dyke Show has been broadcast for five years on the South Coast station and is known for its controversial tone. Following press reports of a woman posting pictures of herself breastfeeding on social media, Dyke appealing for listeners to phone the show.
He described breastfeeding as “OK in the Stone Age” and something that was done by women who contribute to Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour. “I think it’s a special kind of breed of women, women who are like history teachers, or geography teachers, you know, the librarian types, the ones with moustaches.”
The comments prompted 6,000 people to sign an online petition calling for Dyke to be taken off air.
The BBC told Ofcom that Dyke had apologised on air, had been required to undertaken “refresher training” and “had genuinely considered the effect of his comments”.
A BBC spokesperson said: “We take the Ofcom and BBC Trust findings very seriously indeed. Alex was told at the time in no uncertain terms that his comments were unacceptable, and he apologised for any offence caused on and off air."
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