TELLY host Naga Munchetty breached BBC guidelines by suggesting President Donald Trump was guilty of racism, the corporation’s complaints unit has decided. The BBC Breakfast presenter, 44, expressed concern on the show on July 19 after the US President said four congresswoman should “go back” to the “places from which they came.” Seeming to go […]
TELLY host Naga Munchetty breached BBC guidelines by suggesting President Donald Trump was guilty of racism, the corporation’s complaints unit has decided.
The BBC Breakfast presenter, 44, expressed concern on the show on July 19 after the US President said four congresswoman should “go back” to the “places from which they came.”
Seeming to go off script, she dwelled upon her own experiences of being told go home in the UK, saying the comments made her “furious”.
She sighed in despair, shaking her head in reaction to the president’s comments on Twitter.
Her co-host Dan Walker said: “That was the most telling quote for me last night. I can’t remember who said it, but she said ‘I’ve been told to go home many times, to go back to where I came from, but I’ve never been told by the man in the Oval Office.
Fiercely agreeing with Dan, Naga said: “Every time I have been told, as a woman of colour, to go back to go back to where I came from, that was embedded in racism.
“Now I’m not accusing anyone of anything here, but you know what certain phrases mean.”
The four congresswomen, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib, were told by the president that they should “go back and help fix the totally broken places from which they came”.
The four women are US citizens and three of them were born and raised in the US.
But the BBC said “her comments went beyond what the guidelines allow for,” despite saying she was entitled to “give a personal response.”
It is yet to be decided whether Naga, who has been on the show for the past decade, will be reprimanded.
A BBC spokeswoman told the corporation’s Executive Complaints Unit: “A summary of the complaint and the decision to partially uphold it will be published on the complaints pages of bbc.co.uk, and as normal this will include a note of any action taken as a result of the finding.”
