Comedy has limits – and Jimmy Carr may have reached them with his ‘joke’ about Gypsies

Editorial: Even the staunchest defenders of free speech must recognise that some attempts at humour are beyond the pale

Jimmy Carr: unfunny and unbroadcastable (Netflix)

We are uneasy about some of the attempts to sanitise comedy in recent years. The BBC was right, for example, to reverse its decision two years ago to remove the Fawlty Towers episode “The Germans” from its UKTV streaming service. And while the broadcaster may have been justified in editing out some lines in classic shows that would be more offensive to modern audiences than they were at the time – including some of the lines in Fawlty Towers – it should have been open and explicit about the changes that had been made.

The Independent has always been resolute in its commitment to freedom of expression, and we have always believed that it should not need to be said that free speech includes the right to offend. That is why we have never been in favour of the government policing the level of offence that comedy, or any other form of expression, is allowed to cause.

However, even the staunchest defenders of the right of comedians to break boundaries must recognise that some attempts at humour are beyond the pale. Quite apart from not being funny, Jimmy Carr’s so-called joke about Gypsies and the Holocaust crossed the line from mere offence to incitement to hatred. The mass murder of people on grounds of their race is the worst crime, and any attempt to satirise its advocates risks crossing that line.

As Pragya Agarwal observes in her article for us, “Jimmy Carr’s ‘joke’ about the Romani communities is not being done ironically or to create incongruity, or even to nudge people into acknowledging their own biases and prejudices. Instead, it is making a punchline out of a marginalised group.”

No responsible publisher or broadcaster should knowingly allow such material on their platforms, and Netflix should remove it immediately.

Thus, we find ourselves in the unexpected position of endorsing the comments made by Nadine Dorries, the culture secretary, who condemned Mr Carr and Netflix, and said that the government was “already looking at future legislation to bring into scope those sort of comments”.

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She has not been in her post for long, but the government has been too slow to deal with the growth of streaming services, many of which are not covered by existing legislation regulating the content of broadcasts.

We are not advocating censorship; merely that the responsibilities imposed on traditional broadcasters be extended to companies such as Netflix, which currently acts like a broadcaster in the UK without being regulated by Ofcom. Broadcasters that are regulated by Ofcom are required by law to exclude material likely to “encourage or incite the commission of crime”.

Ofcom’s rules further spell out the kind of “hate speech” that should not be broadcast. We have in the past expressed concerns that the definition may be too wide, and could be used to curtail free speech, but even if the definition were made more rigorous, it would and should cover Mr Carr’s performance on this occasion. The sooner the government brings Netflix, Amazon and other streaming services “into scope” the better.

As for Mr Carr, he commented at the start of his show last night that it was “a career ender”. He may well be right about that, and it would be entirely his fault.