Sinn Fein Councillor,Niall Ó Donnghaile appeared on the Nolan TV Show last week to talk about Gregory Campbell’s “Curry my yogurt” quote in the Assembly earlier that week.
However, Ó Donnghaile has taken offence about how Nolan dealt with the issue as he kept repeating the remarks in an attempt to get Niall to laugh. Ó Donnghaile has said in a statement released yesterday
offensive remarks were repeated ad nauseam in order to get a cheap laugh…The disrespect shown to me and the Irish language community on BBC’s the Nolan TV Show on November 5 was totally unacceptable…This was an insult to me and to an entire community and I don’t think this would be acceptable in any other area in which the BBC operates.
The BBC needs to state clearly whether it has a different standard for Irish language speakers than any other racial, ethnic or linguistic group
The BBC has said that it is looking into the matter but rejects the allegation that the Nolan show was in anyway racist.
A question for the Sluggerverse, who is right in this matter, did Nolan step over the line during the programme? Or has this been blown out of proporation?
David McCann holds a PhD in North-South relations from University of Ulster. You can follow him on twitter @dmcbfs
