ITV’s Good Morning Britain breached broadcast rules in an interview with ex-Wish You Were Here? travel show host Judith Chalmers in which “favourable references” were made to Travel Republic.
TV watchdog Ofcom issued the ruling on Monday after a complaint was received about the breakfast television show screened on July 30.
The complainant suggested that the segment, featuring an interview with Chalmers having been voted the UK’s ‘all-time leading TV travel icon’ in research by the online travel agency, promoted Travel Republic.
Chalmers said that Travel Republic “sell[s] 300,000 holidays a year…to over a thousand countries”, highlighting the success of the company. This promotional language was reinforced by her description of it as “a wonderful company”, Ofcom said.
ITV accepted that it would have been preferable for her not to refer to Travel Republic’s products and services in this way, and this “had not been anticipated”.
It did not make clear to what extent Chalmers had been briefed before the programme to ensure that she did not use promotional language when discussing Travel Republic.
ITV submitted that presenter Ben Shephard had politely attempted to move the conversation off the topic of Travel Republic’s products and services with his comment “sounds great”.
“In Ofcom’s view, this comment had the effect of appearing to confirm, rather than shift focus away from, the favourable references made to Travel Republic,” the watchdog said.
“Ofcom’s decision is that these references were promotional” and in breach of its codes.
ITV said that Chalmers had been booked to appear on the programme because the production team considered that it would be of interest and relevance to viewers to discuss her views on holidays, her career as a presenter of travel programmes on ITV, and her involvement in filming related to the research commissioned by Travel Republic.
It said: “The programme routinely gives editorial coverage to social trends and attitudes. As such, the team felt it was editorially justified to include reference to the Travel Republic research, particularly given it was the start of the summer holiday period, and that it was a project relevant to Mrs Chalmers’ previous career”.
ITV confirmed that it had retained full editorial control over the interview and taken into account the requirements of [the broadcast code].
It said it had taken the decision not to include any clips from a video filmed by Chalmers for Travel Republic, because it considered it to be overly promotional.
ITV instead planned “a wide-ranging discussion”, in which any references to the research would focus on the findings and Chalmers’ involvement, rather than the products and services offered by Travel Republic.
ITV observed that the interview had lasted around four minutes and covered a range of topics, most of them unrelated to Travel Republic.
However, ITV acknowledged that Chalmers did discuss the products and services offered by Travel Republic.
Shephard’s interruption to say “Sounds great” was “a polite attempt to move the conversation away from Travel Republic’s services and back to the topic in hand”.
In addition, Chalmers referred again to “the video of what I’ve done” towards the end of the interview, which in ITV’s view would have made it clear to viewers that she had a commercial relationship with Travel Republic.
ITV acknowledged that it would have been preferable if Chalmers had just discussed her filming for Travel Republic’s research and the findings and explained both more fully, and if she had not made the references to Travel Republic’s business and services.
It added that the GMB team did not anticipate that the guest would make such detailed references.
Nevertheless, ITV considered that Judith Chalmers’ references to Travel Republic’s products and services were intended to explain how the company was responding to the consumer trends detailed in its research, and that there was therefore some editorial justification for their inclusion.
It added that the references were “relatively brief”, and that the company was only mentioned by name twice.
In the context of a wide-ranging discussion of consumer trends in the holiday sector, ITV argued that the references to Travel Republic were “appropriately brief and limited”, and were neither promotional nor unduly prominent.
However, Ofcom said its rules require that a distinction is maintained between programmes and advertising.
They “help ensure that viewers are easily able to differentiate between advertising and editorial material and also support rules that restrict the amount of advertising broadcasters can transmit”.