Thursday, August 01, 2013

The Kick It Out campaign is twenty years old. Its original aim was to kick racism out of football. But more recently the campaign has widened its remit to include other forms of prejudice, including homophobia.

It seems there's some way to go before Newsround deals with the topic of homophobic bullying in schools, but there was a small sign of change today. Newsround has frequently talked about racism in sport, and this morning the first story at 8am was about a new app designed to help people report abusive behaviour directly from the terraces.

Joe Tidy: The atmosphere in the ground, the cheering, the chanting from the crowd are all part of what makes football great. But what do you do if you're at a match and you hear something abusive? Well according to anti-racism campaign, Kick It Out, using your smartphone could be one of the answers. They've released an app that lets users report racist, homophobic or other abuse as and when it happens.

That was the first time on air that Newsround has specifically acknowledged homophobia as a form of abuse. Joe's full report is also on this webpage.

Originally the webpage headline "Kick It Out launches anti-racism app for football matches" was followed with the byline "A smartphone app for reporting racist, homophobic and other abuse is launched by Kick It Out." But within minutes the page was revised to its present form.

I believe Newsround presenters want the programme to deal with all kinds of prejudice that kids might encounter. But obviously others at the BBC are less willing to help in the fight against anti-gay prejudice.

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