“Pranks” on teachers

After being alerted of this phenomenon several times, the Ombudsman started an inquiry on her own initiative into the procedure of the Council for Radio and Television Broadcasting (hereinafter the “Council”) in the case of a competition announcement by a radio station, which invited listeners to make videos of “pranks” – meaning, in this particular context, videos showing teachers in unexpected and embarrassing situations staged by students.

The Council originally maintained that the matter was beyond its mandate as it was not competent to supervise YouTube, i.e. the website where the students posted their videos. The Council changed its position following my notice, accepting that while it could not monitor video content published on YouTube, it was competent to assess whether the radio station’s competition announcement was appropriate.

It is worth noting that the school ombudsman condemned the challenge; the ombudsman considers such pranks cruel and socially problematic. In the ombudsman’s opinion, the pranks, if also incentivised with reward and publicity, seriously compromise family and school education and are remarkably prone to escalate into cyberbullying.  Equally alarmed by the matter was Mgr. Kamil Kopecký, Ph.D., editor-in-chief of the E-bezpečí (or E-safety) project, www.e-bezpeci.cz. In his editorial published on 28 February 2016, Mr Kopecký mentions (quote) that he is “certain that without the campaign broadcast by a commercial radio station, students would not come up with creating videos that humiliate and insult teachers on such a massive scale.” The Ombudsman is convinced that the views of the school ombudsman and the expert on cyberbullying deserve attention.

Following her request, the Council evaluated the facts of the competition announcement and informed her that it found violation of the law as the challenge targeted children and juveniles without being moderated by explaining that the goal of the “prank” should not be to place teachers in humiliating situations and videoing them under such conditions. The Council concluded that the broadcast challenge was capable of affecting mental and moral development of children and juveniles, because in pursuit of high viewing numbers and hence a chance for winning the competition, students could bring teachers into situations that are undesirable on school grounds and with respect to the teacher-student relationship and were capable of causing psychological harm to teachers. The Council requested that the operator of the radio station ensure remedy; this, however, was impossible because the competition had already ended. However, the Council promised to monitor similar broadcasts more carefully in the future, following which the Ombudsman closed the inquiry.