Good Morning Britain has been slammed with more than 300 Ofcom complaints in just one week, with 354 lodged against the ITV programme which aired on September 11. Ofcom has shared that viewers made complaints over remarks made during a debate about Charlie Kirk’s assassination, with them particularly being outraged with statements from guest Nels Abbey. The programme sparked fury after the contributor likened Charlie Kirk to a former Ku Klux Klan chief just hours after Kirk’s death. One day after Kirk’s assasination, GMB presenters Kate Garraway and Ed Balls welcomed former Conservative MP Michael Gove and writer Nels Abbey onto the show.
Gove characterised Kirk as “a sort of Cicero for the TikTok age”, whilst Abbey hit back: “I believe he was a David Duke for the TikTok age,” referencing the neo-Nazi and ex-grand wizard of the KKK. “This is by no means trying to justify his murder. Political violence is wrong at home; it’s wrong abroad. Political violence must be condemned, as must the propagandising for political violence and the dehumanisation of people,” he elaborated.
He continued: “Charlie Kirk was somebody who… I shiver, particularly for Conservatives when he’s described as Conservative, because he wasn’t. He was quite clearly and comfortably a supremacist.”
“The very sort of people he helped dehumanise over the years… the exact same thing that he sort of helped to legitimise for them has happened to him,” he went on.
“It’s sad, it’s wrong, but there’s a moral lesson in here too, which is to recognise your own vulnerability, be more empathetic, don’t propagandise for people’s murder. It could happen to you.”
Viewers were left outraged by the comments at the time, and the show has now received 354 complaints.
“Nels Abbey should be sacked immediately,” wrote one at the time, while another said: “GMB needs to seriously consider never showing Nels Abbey on their show ever again.”
Another fumed: “On ITV’s Good Morning Britain, Nels Abbey had the audacity to call Charlie Kirk a “white supremacist” and liken him to David Duke, former Grand Wizard of the KKK.
Utterly sickening. He hasn’t even been dead a day, and this is what they say.”
A third echoed: “Disgusting. Shame on you Nels Abbey. Shame. shame. shame. How ill informed can a person be!!? @ITV APOLOGISE NOW! Sickening.”
Elsewhere, it’s been revealed that the ITV daytime show received 95 complaints for their programme on September 15.
Jeremy Vine also received 85 complaints for the broadcast on September 12.