Sunday 16 October 2016

Sloppy BBC reporting



The news bulletin on this morning's Broadcasting House presented the story of Boris's alternative 'Remain' article in a less than accurate manner. 

They selectively quoted his article, which made it seem more adamant (against Brexit) than it was, and then added their own editorial comment along the lines of 'this directly contradicted what he said later' (over the cost of the UK's EU membership fee). 

And, for some reason, they kept on attributing lines lifted directly from The Sunday Times and written by a Sunday Times reporter and ascribing them to "sources" or, even less accurately, "sources close to Mr Johnson". ('Well, they would say that, wouldn't they?', unsuspecting Radio 4 listeners might think):
BBC newsreader: Sources close to Mr Johnson said he wrote the article only to help him clarify this thoughts.
BBC reporter: Sources said Mr Johnson only wrote the piece to help articulate his thoughts and it made him realise the case for staying in the EU was weak.
If you don't subscribe to it, here's a screengrab of the relevant passage from the Sunday Times article proving it was the paper's reporter and not unnamed 'sources close to Mr Johnson' who said what the BBC quoted:


Such sloppy reporting isn't what the BBC is supposed to be about, is it


Update: The new bulletin on The Andrew Marr Show repeated many of the same things but here the BBC reporter (Alex Forsyth) added that "the full content only appears to highlight his long-held Eurosceptic views".

2 comments:

  1. Disgraceful misrepresentation (and to be fair on ITV as well as BBC).

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Rather than 'fair', that seems more a case of 'two Brexit wrongs make an MSM narrative'

      Delete

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