Ofcom reveals 2024’s most complained about TV controversies
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Julia Hartley-Brewer, Yvette Cooper, and Joey Essex were among a slew of figures to face Ofcom complaints. In a year of fiery clashes and tumultuous TV segments, one war of words between a divisive veteran journalist and a Palestinian politician took the crown for most complained about moment.
Julia Hartley-Brewer’s heated exchange with Dr Mustafa Barghouti, the general secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative, on TalkTV on 3 January received 17,366 complaints, media watchdog Ofcom has said. The 56-year-old presenter was discussing the Israel-Hamas war with Dr Barghouti after a senior official in the militant group Hamas, Saleh Arouri, was killed.
She was seen becoming agitated with her guest and accused him of not letting her “finish a sentence”, saying “maybe you’re not used to women talking”, seemingly implying that his background meant he did not like women to speak. After assessing the complaints, Ofcom said it told TalkTV to “take extra care to ensure that potentially highly offensive comments are editorially justified”.
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The volume of complaints received for Hartley-Brewer’s interview was almost double those to the most complained about programme of last year – Laurence Fox’s “misogynistic comments” about female journalist Ava Evans, in which he asked “who would want to shag that?”, received 8,867 complaints.
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