Childish Gambino finds himself at the center of another BBC broadcasting disaster after the network aired a racial slur during two separate Newsbeat bulletins on April 27.
The slur originated from a backing track utilized in segments covering “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie,” a project in which Gambino stars alongside Chris Pratt, Anya Taylor-Joy, Jack Black, and Brie Larson.
BBC Radio 1 listeners were exposed to the offensive language during broadcasts at 12:45 P.M. and 5:45 P.M. The network subsequently acknowledged that the incorrect version of the artist’s song had been selected during the editing process.
A BBC spokesperson issued an apology, stating, “We are very sorry this was broadcast. We should not have included this clip in this news report, and we removed the clip from Sounds when we realized the error.”
This incident arrives at a particularly difficult time for the broadcaster, which faced significant backlash just weeks prior for allowing the same slur to appear in edited coverage of the BAFTA Awards ceremony.
During that February broadcast, disability campaigner John Davidson, who lives with Tourette’s Syndrome, involuntarily shouted the slur while Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo were presenting an award at London’s Royal Festival Hall. Davidson, 54, was representing the film “I Swear,” which documents his life with the condition.
Davidson later expressed he was “deeply mortified” by the outburst, clarifying that his comments were not a reflection of his personal beliefs. The Scottish campaigner, who has coprolalia—a symptom of Tourette’s causing involuntary utterance of inappropriate words—questioned why he was seated with a microphone positioned directly in front of him, noting that BAFTA organizers had assured him any swearing would be edited out.
The BBC’s repeated failures to properly screen content containing the slur have raised serious questions regarding editorial oversight at one of the world’s largest broadcasting corporations.
