Republic Bharat rapped by Ofcom for allegations of hatred & abuse

Ofcom has rapped the now defunct channel, Republic Bharat for breaching UK regulations.

In an Ofcom update, it said that the media regulator had received a complaint about a programme contained “demeaning” statements which amounted to abusive and derogatory treatment of Pakistani people.

‘The Debate with Arnab’ is a regular English-language current affairs debate and discussion programme presented by the journalist Arnab Goswami. The debate featured in this episode took place in the context of Pakistan’s announcement that it was planning to hold parliamentary elections in GilgitBaltistan.

The licence holder told Ofcom it had recently taken measures to improve its compliance, including suspending over 60 programmes between January and late September 2020 in order to “avoid” broadcasting “live debates which could contain inappropriate verbal exchanges” in the UK.

The Licensee acknowledged that “given the Geo-political nature of this debate, this live programme should have been identified as potentially problematic in terms of commentary” and “assigned as ‘suspended’ in our scheduling system”. The Licensee added that it was investigating “why the suspension instruction was not actioned” in the case of this programme considering its subject matter.

Ofcom expressed concern that after the publication of the above decisions, the Licensee went on to broadcast two further programmes which we have found to be in breach of Rule 3.3 of the Code.

Republic Bharat ceased broadcasting in the UK in May.