Most complained about Ofcom moments of the year - Emmerdale to Love Island's Joey Essex
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As the year comes to a close, it's time to take a look back at some of the most complained about moments on the small screen in 2024. Leading the way was Julia Hartley-Brewer’s heated exchange with a Palestinian politician on her TalkTV show, according to media watchdog Ofcom. The broadcaster's remarks during an interview with Mustafa Barghouti, the general secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative, on January 3 received 17,366 complaints.
She had been talking about the Hamas-Israel war with Dr Barghouti after a senior official in the militant group Hamas, Saleh Arouri, was killed. The interview clip shown on TalkTV saw Hartley-Brewer becoming agitated with her guest before accusing him of not letting her “finish a sentence”.
After assessing the complaints, Ofcom revealed it told TalkTV to “take extra care to ensure that potentially highly offensive comments are editorially justified”. The number of complaints received for Hartley-Brewer’s interview was almost double those to the most complained about programme of last year, which was Laurence Fox ’s “misogynistic comments” about female journalist Ava Evans. His actions received 8,867 complaints.
The top spot was then followed this year by an episode of ITV ’s Good Morning Britain on August 5, in which 16,851 complaints were made. Mos of the complaints were focused on an argumentative interview with Coventry South MP Zarah Sultana about the violent protests in some parts of the UK in the wake of the killing of three young girls in Southport. There were also approximately 1,000 complaints directed towards Ed Balls as he interviewed his wife, the Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, about the protests.
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