Ofcom has criticised the BBC’s handling of the Naga Munchetty row, after ruling the presenter did not breach the TV watchdog’s impartiality guidelines with her comments about President Trump’s racist tweets.
BBC Breakfast will not face further investigation from the regulator, after it performed an assessment on a complaint made about the presenter’s remarks during a discussion on the show in July.
However, Ofcom has said it has “serious concerns around the transparency of the BBC’s complaints process” following its handling of the matter.
The BBC’s own Executive Complaints Unit had previously ruled that Naga had breached the corporation’s guidelines after she suggested the US president’s call for a group of female politicians to “go back” to their own countries was “embedded in racism”.
After the BBC suffered a fierce backlash from commentators and a number of their own employees for upholding the complaint, director-general Lord Tony Hall later overturned the ruling, noting that Naga’s words were not “sufficient to merit a partial uphold of the complaint”.
While they will not be investigating the specific case, Ofcom said it “will be addressing the BBC’s lack of transparency as a matter of urgency”.
In response, a BBC spokesperson said: “We note Ofcom’s finding and the fact they agree with the director-general’s decision.”
Back in July, Naga had responded to Trump’s tweets suggesting four Democratic politicians should “go back” to their home countries, saying she was “absolutely furious”.
She said: “Every time I have been told, as a woman of colour, to go back to where I came from, that was embedded in racism.
“Now, I’m not accusing anyone of anything here, but you know what certain phrases mean.”
The tweets in question had been written about US politicians Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib and Ayanna Pressley. All four are US citizens, and three of them were born in America.