BBC Breakfast host Naga Munchetty broke the corporation’s guidelines with her criticism of US president Donald Trump earlier this year.
Naga made headlines following an off-script moment in July, when she said she was “absolutely furious” about tweets Trump had posted regarding four Democratic politicians, suggesting they should “go back” to their home countries.
During a discussion, Naga said she had been the recipient of similar comments on a number of occasions, stating: “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.”
However, while Naga received praise from many viewers with her response to Trump, others felt that she had breached the BBC’s strict guidelines around impartiality.
The BBC’s Executive Complaints Unit [ECU] has now said that they are upholding an official complaint about the incident, ruling that Naga did go “beyond what the guidelines allow for” by suggesting Trump’s remarks were “embedded in racism”.
They said in an official statement: “The ECU ruled that while Ms Munchetty was entitled to give a personal response to the phrase ‘go back to your own country’ as it was rooted in her own experience, overall her comments went beyond what the guidelines allow for.”
The tweets in question had been posted by Trump about US politicians Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib and Ayanna Pressley. All four of these are US citizens, and three of them were born in America.