Ofcom will not investigate complaints against BBC after reporter used n-word

Incident prompted more than 18,500 complaints from viewers

Ofcom has announced it will not be investigating complaints over a BBC presenter’s use of the n-word in a TV news report.

Social affairs correspondent Fiona Lamdin repeated the racial slur on 29 July last year, during a report on what police believe to have been a racially-motivated hit-and-run attack on a young NHS worker in Bristol.

The broadcaster revealed that it received more than 18,600 complaints over the news report. However, Ofcom have now said that the case does not warrant further investigation “in light of the action already taken by the BBC”.

According to the media watchdog, BBC responded to the incident and changed its rules on the use of offensive language in its broadcasts. Decisions to air racist terms will now be referred to BBC bosses.

Ofcom said in a statement issued to Metro.co.uk that Lamdin’s news report “had the potential to cause very high levels of offence which was not justified by the context”. 

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Ofcom added: “We were concerned that the first response of the BBC was to defend the broadcast of this language in these reports.”

The BBC initially attempted to justify the use of the racial slur, stating: “These are difficult judgements but the context is very important in this particular case. We believe we gave adequate warnings that upsetting images and language would be used and we will continue to pursue this story.”

Amid the ongoing backlash, however, former BBC director-general Lord Tony Hall later apologised for the incident.

He said that the broadcaster “now accepts that we should have taken a different approach at the time of broadcast and we are very sorry for that”.

At the time of the report last summer, it was the second-most complained about incident since the BBC began using its current complaints system in 2017. Only Emily Maitlis’s monologue about Dominic Cummings on Newsnight in May received more, with 23,674.