Thousands of angry viewers have sent complaints to the broadcaster watchdog Ofcom over Good Morning Britain presenter Ed Balls interviewing his wife Yvette Cooper on Monday 5 August.
It comes in a busy week for the watchdog which also published a letter it had sent to social media companies including Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter) over misinformation and videos being shared on their platforms.
Ofcom today announced that 8,201 people had complained about Good Morning Britain (GMB) on 5 August following the decision by the popular breakfast show to allow presenter Ed Balls to interview his own wife over her political role as home secretary.
Mr Balls, himself a former Labour leadership candidate and cabinet minister, was grilling Ms Cooper about the riots and far-right civil unrest spreading across the country.
GMB has made no comment on the complaints, but on the day there was fury over the program’s decision not to ask Mr Balls to stand back from an interview where his relationship with Ms Cooper left his impartiality in question.
It was likened to previous cases against broadcaster GB News who Ofcom found to have broken the rules when Tory MPs working as presenters interviewed other Tory MPs.
Ahead of the interview, mostly by co-host Kate Garraway, Mr Balls, who has been married to Ms Cooper for more than 25 years, insisted he had “genuine questions” for his wife, as he has “rarely seen her at all in the last week” because of the disorder on the streets.
But many compared his softer approach to an earlier interview with Labour MP Zara Sultana who had an angry interview with Garraway and Balls about the rioters, when they interrupted her as she called for political leaders to condemn the protests as “Islamophobic” and “racist”.
Meanwhile, in a week where concerns have been raised about Elon Musk’s tweets about the UK many of which were directed attacks at prime minister Sir Keir Starmer, Ofcom has issued a letter of warning to social media platforms.
It has made it clear it is worried about content sharing of violent images and disinformation which some believe has helped fuel the far-right riots.
In letter to online platforms, Ofcom’s director of online safety Gill Whitehead said: “Under Ofcom’s regulations that pre-date the Online Safety Act, UK-based video-sharing platforms must protect their users from videos likely to incite violence or hatred. We therefore expect video-sharing platforms to ensure their systems and processes are effective in anticipating and responding to the potential spread of harmful video material stemming from the recent events.”
He went on: “Ofcom has moved quickly to consult on risk assessment guidance and codes of practice on illegal harms, setting out the practical steps we expect services to deploy across a range of areas including governance, content moderation, user reporting and account removal. We have also published draft guidance on how companies can judge whether content or activity is illegal. As with all of our work, our proposals recognise the importance of protecting freedom of expression.
“We expect continued engagement with companies over this period to understand the specific issues they face, and we welcome the proactive approaches that have been deployed by some services in relation to these acts of violence across the UK.”
He added: “In a few months, new safety duties under the Online Safety Act will be in place, but you can act now – there is no need to wait to make your sites and apps safer for users.”
In its weekly bulletin, Ofcom also revealed that GB News has itself had another program attracting complaints with 298 submitted about Britain’s Newsroom on 29 July.