British Broadcaster Censored a “Big Brother” Contestant’s Watermelon Shirt

ITV, the broadcaster of the British version of the reality series “Big Brother,” edited an episode of the show to remove all shots of a shirt worn by one of the contestants which featured a watermelon — a symbol of Palestinian solidarity.

Watermelon iconography has been associated with Palestine since at least the 1960s but has grown in usage amid Israel’s war on Gaza and prohibitions on displaying the Palestinian flag.

Following the initial broadcast of the episode in which contestant Ali Bromley wore a T-shirt showing a watermelon slice, groups such as the Campaign Against Antisemitism took to social media to claim that the “graphic has caused significant distress among the British Jewish community, who regard it as a genocidal message.” The group also stated that it submitted a complaint to the Office of Communications, a U.K. television regulatory body which prescribes broadcasting standards. The code contains a section on harm and offense, which calls for “adequate protection for members of the public from the inclusion in such services of harmful and/or offensive material.”

ITV issued an apology to “to any viewers who have been offended by the broadcast.”

The episode was removed from ITV’s streaming portal, and later a new version was uploaded without any shots showing the watermelon shirt.

The Intercept reviewed footage of the original broadcast and compared it to the edited version. The new version of the episode included more than a dozen meticulous edits to remove any depiction of the watermelon image, using an array of techniques including cropping the frame, obstructing the logo with a black bar, and replacing shots with contemporaneous footage filmed from a different angle.

The culminating effect is to ensure the total eradication of Palestinian imagery — mirroring the broader pattern of erasure of Palestinian voices across the media landscape. Netflix recently deleted almost the entirety of its “Palestinian Stories” collection.

ITV did not respond to a request for comment.

Unlike other British broadcasters, such as the BBC, ITV doesn’t appear to have publicly listed guidelines for removal of online content. The new version of the episode is not accompanied by any disclosure notice acknowledging the editing.

An ITV Producers Handbook also doesn’t mention any guidelines for disclosing content editing, though it does state that “it should always be clear to viewers what it is they are watching, and truth must not be sacrificed to make programmes more entertaining or impactful,” and that “programme makers must not invent or fake events or present reconstructions as being actual events in any factual content, whatever the genre.” Discussing “constructed” reality programming, the handbook further instructs producers to “generally not breach viewer trust principles where the genre and the conventions being deployed are sufficiently clear to viewers.”

The title of the series, “Big Brother,” is an overt nod to the all-encompassing surveillance apparatus in George Orwell’s book “1984,” with show contestants living in a home filled with cameras representing the Big Brother surveillance state. It seems the show has now adopted another key tenant of the novel: old media being edited and original versions destroyed, leaving no trace of any modification having taken place. The book’s protagonist muses: “The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth.”

The post British Broadcaster Censored a “Big Brother” Contestant’s Watermelon Shirt appeared first on The Intercept.