BBC To Apologize on Air

The BBC now tells me that it plans to apologize on air for its treatment of me, during next Sunday morning's 'News Briefing'.

 

The Corporation's e-mail reads as follows : '

'I have been discussing this matter with the relevant editorial staff at BBC News since you alerted us to the mistake. We would like to inform you that we will be apologising for this error during the equivalent slot of ‘News Briefing’ on Sunday 25 May 2014. Additionally, we will publish an entry on the BBC’s Corrections and Clarifications page explaining our actions.

 

We regard this as an editorial error; however we don’t agree that it represented wider or electoral bias against UKIP as you suggest.'

 

Of course it is an error. But why does this particular error keep on being made again and again? It is a particular kind of error, in which the published view of a prominent conservative columnist has been misrepresented (in this case by omission) , and listeners exposed to a one-sided selection of newspaper comments on a major political party in the midst of an election campaign. Has there been any parallel error, in which a prominent left-wing columnist has had his or her work misrepresented on air, or in which the impression has been given on air that there is near-unanimous press hostility to any of the establishment parties?

 

Indeed, has there been any other error of this kind *at all*, ever, on News Briefing or any other Radio 4 news programme, or other BBC news programme, which reviews the press? Or is this error as unique as the 'error' which caused me to be misrepresented on the same radio station's 'What the Papers Say' (29th July 2012)

http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.u...

 And as unique as the 'error' in which Ken Follett, gave an inaccurate version of words I had written about Keith Richards on the Andrew Marr programme, and was not corrected at the time by the presenter?

See

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics...

 

In this case, also, the programme admitted it was at fault, and I was invited on to a subsequent programme to put the matter right.  But the problem still arose in the first place. The Marr programe is of course a live programme with non-BBC guests.  In my experience, press quotations on the Andrew Marr programme are discussed in advance, and there was ample opportunity to prevent or correct any misquotation at the time. 

 

So it is of course not unique. There are now three such instances, two of them on Radio 4.  Is it not passing strange that I have twice had my writing misrepresented on air by the same Radio Station? And thrice by the BBC as a whole? Has it happened to anyone else, ever? Even once? Radio 4 is a not unbureaucratic organisation. Why have its checks and balances failed so completely on two occasions, both involving me? 

 

It then explains to me that I can take the matter to the Editorial Complaints Unit if I am dissatisfied. I shall.  I am dissatisfied, not least because the apology will not be broadcast until after the polls have been closed, polls which may have been affected by the bias I believe was displayed on this occasion. I have written to the ECU. 

 

Then of course there is the problem of the biased selection of comments about UKIP, at a key stage on the election. I must stress again, this is a grave breach of due impartiality on matters of public controversy,  made worse by the fact that it took place soon before the poll and while postal votes were actually being cast.  It needs to be investigated as such. Since almost all the press have been hostile to UKIP during this campaign, I believe the BBC rules would require *either* that they found enough comments on either side to provide balance, or that they did not recount the comments at all. If Fleet Street is biased, the BBC has no duty to repeat that bias, but on the contrary has a duty *not* to repeat  it.

 

What is certainly not satisfactory is to parade a selection of anti-UKIP comments, and to quote so selectively from one of the pro-UKIP comments (there were, in fact, others  - notably from Christopher Booker in the Sunday Telegraph) that it appeared to be a condemnation.