A complaint about a radio stunt alluding to prison rape has been upheld by the Broadcasting Standards Authority (BSA).

Broadcaster MediaWorks has been ordered to pay $1000 in costs and make a statement on air.

The BSA found the stunt on The Rock Morning Rumble breached the good taste and decency and responsible programming standards.

The broadcast took place on 16 December 2015 when morning hosts of The Rock who had the Prime Minister as a guest invited him to enter a cage installed in the studio. He was asked by the hosts to ‘pick up the soap’. As the soap was picked up the host quoted a line from a recognised rape scene in the film Deliverance.

MediaWorks noted that comic material will often refer to challenging concepts, but considered that ‘drawing humour from unsavoury ideas is not the same as trivialising or condoning them’. It said that there were no direct or explicit references to sexual violence but rather ‘euphemisms reliant on well-worn clichés that required a certain level of maturity among listeners to be understood’.

The independent broadcaster said that the material in question did not fall outside what regular listeners of both the station and the programme would expect, and that sufficient care was taken to ensure the content was acceptable in context.

However, BSA deemed that the stunt was a deliberate reference to prison rape and trivialised sexual violence.

In its decision the authority said, “Sexual violence is a serious issue which affects some of the most vulnerable people in society, including those who are incarcerated.”

It found that the content went “beyond currently accepted norms of good taste and decency into something that was inappropriate and in poor taste, and would have offended many people.”

“This was not an off-the-cuff or fleeting joke made on the spur of the moment. Rather, the gathering and use of props such as soap, as well as quoting from the film Deliverance, in our view clearly required some forethought.”

The Authority noted that while The Rock and The Rock Morning Rumble are known for an irreverent and controversial brand of humour, this broadcast went too far and showed poor judgement.

The Authority ordered MediaWorks to broadcast a statement summarising the upheld aspects of its decision on top of costs to the Crown.