The UK broadcasting regulator, Ofcom, rarely publishes decisions about TV programmes which do NOT breach the Broadcasting Code. When they do, it means they want to make a point to the general public and broadcasters. Ofcom’s new decision (2 June 2025) about an edition of ITV1’s Good Morning Britain (GMB) shown on Holocaust Memorial Day 2025 is no exception.
On the morning of 27 January 2025, GMB marked the Memorial Day with stories in its news bulletins and various other items in the programme. Crucially in the news bulletins on three separate occasions the newsreader stated: “King Charles will become the first British head of state to visit Auschwitz-
Birkenau later today as part of events to mark 80 years since the liberation of the
Nazi death camp. Six million people were killed in concentration camps during the
Second World War, as well as millions of others because they were Polish,
disabled, gay, or belonged to another ethnic group”.
Holocaust Memorial Day is understandably a moment of high seriousness for many people and especially Jews. So the repeated failure to include the word “Jewish” before “million people” caused over 300 people to complain to Ofcom, saying that this omission caused serious offence.
Ofcom considered the issue against Rule 2.3 of the Code, which in summary says that offence caused by content in a broadcast must be justified by the context. In its decision Ofcom acknowledged that the omission “clearly had a high potential for offence” but concluded that various factors in this case meant that Rule 2.3 was not broken.
ITV in my view defended themselves well and their approach holds lessons for other broadcasters when dealing with the Ofcom. ITV admitted straightaway that there had been a mistake (the word “Jewish” should have been included but no one spotted the error during broadcast), but pointed out (correctly in my view) that from the various other items about Holocaust Memorial Day in the programme no viewer would have been in doubt that the overwhelming majority of victims of the Holocaust were Jewish. GMB also broadcast an apology to viewers at the start of next day’s programme; and the broadcaster has taken steps to ensure better supervision of GMB news bulletins in future, and faster transmission of viewer feedback to the GMB editorial team while on air to enable mistakes to be put right more quickly.
This decision underlines the obvious point: the choice of words by broadcasters matters. Not just the ones selected to be included in a programme. But the ones omitted too. The number of words in a script is mightily important to broadcasters because time is precious. But if there is only room for a set number of words they must be the right ones.
