Dan Walker says he felt he should have spoken out over Naga Munchetty's BBC Breakfast row

Walker says the whole situation should have been dealt with "differently"
Colleagues: Walker and Munchetty frequently host the breakfast show together
BBC
Lollie King17 March 2020
The Weekender

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BBC Breakfast's Dan Walker has said that he feels that he should’ve spoken out in support of his co-host Naga Munchetty after she was reprimanded over comments she made about racism on air.

Munchetty discussed comments made by Donald Trump where he told a female Democrats to “go back” to their own countries in a live episode that aired last year.

She was then criticised for breaching the BBC editorial guidelines. The BBC Director General Lord Tony Hall later reviewed and reversed this ruling.

Walker told the Radio Times that the “BBC should have given a more robust defence of their presenters.”

Naga Munchetty told her BBC co-host 'as a woman of colour' she had been told to 'go back where I've come from'

He added: “We do think it could have been dealt with very differently.

“It was the right decision to overturn the original finding, but it didn’t need to get that far.

“Both of us felt we sailed near the line but we didn’t cross it.”

Munchetty’s comments were made during the July 17 broadcast where she told Walker: “Every time I have been told, as a woman of colour, to go back to where I came from, that was embedded in racism.”

Naga Munchetty was rebuked by the BBC (file image)
Ian West/PA

Adding: “I’m not accusing anyone of anything here, but you know what certain phrases mean.”

Walker also described criticism of the US president as “telling.”

Speaking to the magazine, Walker defended the pair’s discussion during the programme, saying: “Breakfast isn’t the 10 o’clock news.

“We are there to share a bit of ourselves, and maybe we shared a bit too much.

“At the time it felt a very natural conversation.

Dan Walker sparked a war of words after sharing the widely seen Love Island statistic
PA Archive/PA Images

“We knew in that moment that it was different to the sort of things we usually talk about.

“But I don’t regret it, and I don’t think Naga does either.”

He added that these comments are the first time he has spoken about the incident “out of respect for Naga”.

He said: “I asked her at the time if she wanted me to speak about it. She was at the centre of this storm.

“I felt I should have said something in support of her, but she didn’t want any more attention.”

He added that following the incident, he wrote to Lord Hall saying: “If Naga is guilty, then I’m guilty.”

Read the full interview in the Radio Times.

Additional reporting by Press Association.

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