Ofcom is investigating whether Labour frontbencher David Lammy‘s LBC show broke its rules on politicians acting as news presenters, the watchdog announced on Monday.
The shadow Foreign Secretary’s show, which aired on Friday 29 March, may have breached the regulator’s due impartiality rules, which state that “no politician may be used as a newsreader, interviewer or reporter in any news programmes unless, exceptionally, it is editorially justified.”
Ofcom received 51 complaints about the show that aired on Good Friday, in which Mr Lammy delivered the news that DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson had stepped down as leader of the party after being charged with historical sex offences.
Mr Lammy has hosted a Sunday morning show on LBC since 2022, with the station paying him over £16,500 since the beginning of the year, according to the MP’s statement of financial interests.
Last month, Ofcom found that five programmes on GB News featuring politicians acting as news presenters had breached its due impartiality rules.
The watchdog’s investigation found that two episodes of Jacob Rees-Mogg’s State of the Nation, two episodes of Friday Morning with the Tory MPs and husband and wife duo Esther McVey and Philip Davies, and one episode of Saturday Morning with the pair, broadcast during May and June 2023, failed to comply with its rules.
As a result of the investigation, GB News was “put on notice” by Ofcom, meaning that any further breaches “may result in the imposition of a statutory sanction.”
Also on Monday, Ofcom warned TalkTV following Julia Hartley-Brewer’s heated exchange about the Hamas-Israel war with Palestinian politician Dr Mustafa Barghouti on her show but declined to launch an investigation.
Ofcom said Ms Hartley-Brewer’s remarks “had the potential to be highly offensive to viewers” but due to their “brevity” and “audience expectations of this presenter and programme, which often features provocative viewpoints” did not reach the threshold for a probe.
“While TalkTV’s position is that Ms Hartley-Brewer’s comments were not motivated by Dr Barghouti’s religion or ethnicity, we recognise that many complainants understood them to be so. Given this, the comments had the potential to be highly offensive to viewers, irrespective of the intent of the presenter,” it added.
“We are therefore issuing strong guidance to TalkTV on the need to take greater care to ensure that potentially highly offensive comments are justified by the context in order to comply with the Broadcasting Code. We expect the broadcaster to take this guidance into account in future programming.”
The episode received more than 17,000 complaints.