ITV rapped over unfair police ASBO report

ITV News was yesterday ordered to air the summary of an Ofcom ruling that the broadcaster took a police officer's quotes about anti-social behaviour out of context.

In January 2010, South Yorkshire Police chief constable Meredydd Hughes agreed to speak to ITV News about a problem family in Doncaster, who had a total of four anti-social behaviour orders against them and numerous complaints.

In the report, Hughes appeared to say: "Let's keep it in perspective, no-one's being murdered, no-one's being assaulted, no-one's being robbed. In this case, we have neighbours who have to get along and we'll do our best to sort it out."

Hughes complained to media regulator Ofcom that the clip had been taken out of context and unfairly portrayed him as making light of the problem.

His comments were also later repeated by an ITV News presenter during an interview with the then-prime minister Gordon Brown, as a way of giving an example of "a chief constable who doesn't seem to get it".

ITV News refuted any suggestion that the interview was unfairly edited or that Hughes was negatively characterised by the presenter. The broadcaster claimed that his comments were fairly summarised in all reports, including the Brown interview.

After watching the unedited interview footage, Ofcom noted that Hughes made it very clear that anti-social behaviour was an important problem that needed addressing.

In its ruling, Ofcom said: "The programme makers' failure to fairly represent these comments and only to rely on the limited extract in the programme as broadcast resulted in Mr Hughes's comments being used out of the full context.

"Ofcom concluded therefore that to present Mr Hughes's comments out of the context in which they were given resulted in unfairness to him."

The media regulator upheld the chief constable's complaint of unfair treatment and ordered ITV to broadcast the summary of its adjudication.