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Terry Thomas applauds Brass Eye for satirising media coverage of paedophilia.

The Channel 4 programme Brass Eye whipped up quite a storm with its edition The Pedo Files. "The sickest TV show ever" screamed the Daily Mail front page. There were more than 2,000 complaints and MPs and the press launched bitter attacks.

The NSPCC said it was a "crude and crass" trivialisation of child sexual abuse. Everyone seemed to miss the point.

The programme was less about paedophiles than about the social reaction to them. In particular, it was a savage debunking of the media presentation of the "paedophile problem" that we have come to be familiar with throughout the past few years.

In the studio Morris was co-ordinating Operation Daisybird - a plan to protect all children by encouraging parents to take their children to sports stadiums because that was the only place where they would be safe.

This was a well-targeted attack on crude and crass media reporting. A reporting that plays on the Sunday tabloids' age-old creed of titillating as they supposedly give sanctimonious enlightenment. No wonder the press are running with the story and getting so hot under the collar.

Twelve days before the Brass Eye broadcast, Channel 4 put out an edition of the cartoon South Park, which had also spoofed paedophilia. It passed without comment. It did not ridicule the media, it came from the US and was in animated format. It was not "close to home".

Just 12 months ago we were in the middle of the News of the World's name-and-shame debacle. A re-reading of that newspaper today gives us almost verbatim lines from Brass Eye, complete with celebrity and expert contributions.

In Brass Eye, celebrities were tricked into contributing to what they thought was a serious programme. Comedian Richard Blackwood explained how paedophiles could send toxic gas through the keyboard of a child's computer, and pop star Phil Collins pontificated while wearing a "Nonce Sense" sweatshirt.

NCH Action for Children has expressed its concern that this ridiculing of celebrities will make it difficult to persuade them to take part in future campaigns. What Brass Eye has done is reveal the vacuity of such contributions from public figures who will read anything they are told.

Morris has performed a useful service in exposing the media's unhelpful contribution to the public debate on child sexual abuse. Anything for a "good" story with salacious undertones. Never mind the human consequences. Anything for ratings and circulation figures.

Today's critics of Brass Eye are those who understand sexual crimes against children only within the parameters they've been given by the media and their attempts to direct the public debate.

Terry Thomas is a senior lecturer in the school of health and community care at Leeds Metropolitan University and author of Sex Crimes: Sex Offending and Society.