Ofcom received 652 complaints about the live broadcast of 'The Sky News Leaders' Debate', screened last Thursday 22 April. The later broadcast of the show on BBC Two received a further 39 complaints.
The majority of the complaints were about Boulton's treatment of Clegg and Boulton's questions about that morning's Daily Telegraph front page article which reported that party donations were paid directly into Clegg's bank account.
Members of the Facebook group "We got Rage Against the Machine to #1, we can get the Lib Dems into office!" were encouraged to complain to Ofcom that Boulton "broke the rules of the debate by heckling Nick Clegg about the Telegraph article". Users of social network Twitter also encouraged each other to complain to Ofcom.
The complainants believed Sky had broken rule 63 of the debate which states "it is not the moderator's role to criticise or comment on the leaders' answers".
The rules of the debates were decided by the three political parties and Ofcom has no responsibility for them or their enforcement. However, a spokesman for Ofcom said it considers every complaint it receives.
Each week Ofcom publishes the list of all the programmes which received more than 10 complaints. Ofcom received an additional 44 complaints about Sky's election coverage.
There were 19 complaints about bias towards the Conservative Party on 'Decision Time: The Sky News Debate' on Sky News which was also broadcast on 22 April and a further 25 complaints about Sky News on 20 April.
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