Tuesday 28 April 2015

Screen-grabbing the BBC




This was the complaint I sent in about it:
Your piece about UKIP's Kim Rose, "UKIP "sausage roll" candidate Kim Rose quotes Hitler", which began, "A UKIP parliamentary candidate has said he does not regret quoting from Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf at a hustings", was extremely biased.
The headline is misleading for starters. Even the Daily Mirror's headline, "Ukip candidate compares EU to Adolf Hitler days after being cleared of sausage roll 'bribe'", makes what the story is really about clearer. Your headline appears to smear UKIP by hinting that Mr Rose is pro-Hitler.
Then your piece says, "Mr Rose was previously questioned by police for providing sausage rolls at a campaign event" and later, "Mr Rose was recently called in for police questioning over allegations he tried to influence voters by giving away sausage rolls at a party event featuring snooker star Jimmy White. Electoral Commission rules state food and entertainment cannot be provided by candidates to "corruptly influence" votes."
This is very lazy journalism. Even the Daily Mirror makes it clear that the police dropped their investigation into Kim Rose. Your report could have misled BBC readers into thinking he was still being investigated for corruption.
Please can you address this matter.

The reply from the BBC Complaints department runs as follows:
Thank you for contacting us regarding the article entitled 'UKIP "sausage roll" candidate Kim Rose quotes Hitler'.
We understand you feel the headline is misleading and the article comes across as biased against UKIP, in particular making the point that you don’t believe it clarifies that Mr Rose is no longer being questioned by Police regarding 'treating' of the electorate.
On this latter point, the article does state that “no further action was taken against him” and includes a link to the story where we reported as much, so we don’t believe this point is unclear in this article or that it suggests that charges were brought or that questioning is continuing.
Your objections to the headline aren’t entirely clear in that Mr Rose was asked if he regretted the comments, including quoting from Mein Kampf, after criticism. He explained that he did not, our headline reflected this and we cannot see anything in this headline which suggests that he is pro Hitler or that its formulation was otherwise unreasonable given the facts of the story.
The BBC does not seek to promote or lobby against any particular Party, our staff are very aware of the importance of impartiality when working on your behalf.
We would like to reassure you that we have taken your comments on board and sent them to our Editors and News teams, as well as senior management and the Executive Board. We have included your points in our overnight report. These reports are among the most widely read sources of feedback in the BBC and this ensures that your complaint has been seen by the right people quickly. This helps inform our decisions about current and future output.
Thank you again for taking the time to contact us.
Kind regards
BBC Complaints
www.bbc.co.uk/complaints

I will admit to experiencing something of a double-take on reading this part of that BBC reply:
...you don’t believe it clarifies that Mr Rose is no longer being questioned by Police regarding 'treating' of the electorate.
On this latter point, the article does state that “no further action was taken against him” and includes a link to the story where we reported as much, so we don’t believe this point is unclear in this article or that it suggests that charges were brought or that questioning is continuing.
The main point of my original post was that the article didn't state any such thing anywhere - and I read it and re-read it to make sure it said that before I sent my complaint. 

Was I mistaken?

As the BBC Complaints guy says, the article does indeed state
Mr Rose was recently called in for police questioning over allegations he tried to influence voters by giving away sausage rolls at a party event featuring snooker star Jimmy White, though no further action was taken against him.
Electoral Commission rules state food and entertainment cannot be provided by candidates to "corruptly influence" votes.
The quotes on my original post, however, ran as follows:
Mr Rose was previously questioned by police for providing sausage rolls at a campaign event....
Mr Rose was recently called in for police questioning over allegations he tried to influence voters by giving away sausage rolls at a party event featuring snooker star Jimmy White.
Electoral Commission rules state food and entertainment cannot be provided by candidates to "corruptly influence" votes.
I copied and pasted those from the BBC article. And I know I did. So, obviously, someone at the BBC went in at some stage and edited the article in order to add the get-out clause saying, "though no further action was taken against him". 

Quite when this done is impossible to say, given that the BBC website's move to a new system has rendered the invaluable Newssniffer site dead in the water. Newssniffer used to capture and track all the edits (including stealth-edits) made to BBC articles. It also showed the time the changes were made. Alas, no more.

Now, as said earlier, I re-checked that article before I sent my complaint, so the BBC's editing-in of "though no further action was taken against him" was unquestionably made quite some time after the original article was published. 

Was it edited after my complaint was received? In response to my complaint (or other such complaints)? We'll never know, will we?

That the original article - at the time it was visible to most readers on the BBC website - did say what I said it said can be proved by the fact that I 'screen-grabbed' it four hours after it first appeared:


It was very lucky that I did, or some people might have believed the BBC rather than me.

(Note to self: Always screen-grab the offending BBC article from now on). 

Incidentally, I don't really buy the rest of the BBC's response either. 

The BBC's headline was much less self-explanatory than the Daily Mirror's and could have been open to misinterpretation. 

And I really don't see how "UKIP 'sausage roll' candidate Kim Rose quotes Hitler" "reflected" the fact that "he explained that he did not" regret the comments. All I can see it "reflecting" is that UKIP's sausage roll candidate Kim Rose quoted Hitler!

I am not impressed.

10 comments:

  1. Screen grab is definitely the rule from now on! :)

    Well done and carry on the good work.

    I would like to add my own "spot" today.

    Although I am in no way a fan of Conservative economic policy...

    Today when the GDP figures came out the BBC (Radios 4 and 5) kept referring
    to the "slow down in the economy" . Of course what they meant (and I think what they corrected to later on - presumably after pressure from the Conservatives) was a slow down in the rate of growth in GDP.

    I can't see how any reputable news organisation would describe the GDP figures indicating GROWTH as "a slow down" or "a slowing".

    Simply not acceptable I think - not for an organisation with over £1 billion worth of resources.

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    Replies
    1. Thank you.

      There seems to be a lot of it about at the moment!

      Delete
  2. "Quite when this done is impossible to say, given that the BBC website's move to a new system has rendered the invaluable Newssniffer site dead in the water. Newssniffer used to capture and track all the edits (including stealth-edits) made to BBC articles. It also showed the time the changes were made. Alas, no more."

    Making 'story evolution' (stealth editing) impossible to track and archiving under their (FOI-exempted) control a real contribution to transparency, is it not?

    I didn't know they had moved system. Maybe a cheeky FOI to ask when, and why? The result will be foregone, but this is an easy, and short one to lay out, and really asking the question answers itself. More so if they refuse to explain for any one of their standard reasons.

    Screen grabs are an essential. But is it not amazing so many of us are catching the BBC in what amounts to massive cover ups by doing so? Do they not grasp that changing things post-complaint and then claiming stuff based on the change... looks crooked as all hell? Clearly not.

    As to what BBC 'reporting', especially headlines, 'reflects', one day they will be held to account for shamelessly avoiding what is in favour of what they think it looks better 'interpreted'.

    Often they claim space (what I term 'no room for truth') constraints, but I have caught them using more characters to fudge accuracy.

    All of which needs exposing for what it is, and shamelessly getting worse.

    Well done on this. I am getting places with my archive and hope to have a Beta to test soon.

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    Replies
    1. Thanks Peter - and I've got a few more complaint responses I'm saving up for your blog.

      As far as I can gather (and apologies for the extreme technical vagueness), the BBC followed the Guardian's lead and moved to a new platform a few months back (around February, I think). Both the Graun and the BBC used to be tracked by Newssniffer. Since the change - and they both look rather alike now - neither are being tracked for edits (except for edits to old articles - which are intriguing in themselves). Newssniffer has been left floundering, merely tracking the New York Times.

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    2. Unsurprising, if typical. It exposed a nasty weakness to their claims of professional integrity, and this has been closed exposing their fear of actual transparency... hence the (hopeful) value of the forthcoming archive collation of their attempts to 'deal' with complaints.

      Interestingly, many of these may (mine often do) have grabs taken at the time to support complaints, and the BBC has real problems with such clear evidence. I have one I treasure where they obliterated a whole post as if it never existed. And when I showed it most certainly had, backtracked and tried to pull a load of BS about 'copyright'.

      This will join others. I just need to find the time to get the framework up to start populating it. I know stuff can be tweaked on the move, but I'm fussing on detail at the moment.

      Delete
  3. I think that news stories by the public broadcaster should be subject to version numbering with each revision having a date / time stamp - all versions being viewable once having been released. Even without that, I would have expected the page to display a last edited date- yet there is none.

    Interesting move by the BBC this - as they used to have this feature. Look at this page, top left back from 2008 as an example:

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/panorama/hi/front_page/newsid_5307000/5307066.stm

    I sent my own comments on the matter to 'Newswatch' for whatever that is worth - but I'm now considering investigating what can be done on the subject of journalistic accountability. If they make an edit - I want to see all previous publicly released versions. That may make them think about the quality of their journalism before they release it in to the wild.

    This complaint may be a very good case for justification of such a measure.

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  4. Further to my comment above - I'm wondering whether we're entitled to ask for all published versions of the story under the freedom of information act?

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/foi/about

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    Replies
    1. I agree with you about that, but I think the BBC are moving in the opposite direction (see the Newssniffer stuff above). Please let us know how your complaint to 'Newswatch' gets on.

      As for going down the FoI Act route...well, yes, please do, but I'll refer you to Peter (above).

      He's repeatedly challenged the BBC through the FoI Act and got nowhere. They have a 'journalism' get-out clause that allows them t to refuse to answer most questions:

      https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/list_of_foi_requests_refused_as#incoming-593536

      Delete
    2. Craig/Anon -

      I have to confess I have/am not enjoying the best of results in my FoI endeavours, but don't let that put you off!

      For a start learn from my mistakes. One (of many) dodges the BBC pulls is rejecting anything that the BBC claims it can't read/understand. Of course they can, but what semantics do not rule, then rigid adherence to the secret ways of framing questions only they know does. So the skills also include avoiding the obvious traps.

      As have I, Craig has fallen foul of more than a few 'Aha... gotcha... back to jail!' quirks.

      However, at the end of the day it is clear they are only there to make sure nothing ever sees the light of said day, even if something is proven/accepted. It just.... 'vanishes'.

      Hence the value of a place where it is all there to view, as if Ms. Manning or Mr. Snowden had spirited a flash drive out of W1A.

      The beauty of an FOI, especially on 'whatdotheyknow.com' is it is already all out there.

      Yes, I have had several blown away, but bar one where I might get another crack at the cherry by a re-edit to suit their playing dumb attempts, all the rest fell back immediately on BBC-concocted exemptions... to providing public information freely.

      There are appeal processes, but these can make a complaint haul look easy.

      But once logged, every time they pull an exemption card out, folk notice. Too many, and they look very suspect indeed.

      ps: I agree fully with all you say on version viewability and numbering.

      Craig, BBCwatch and I are also wounded veterans of 'something' being admitted as having changed, but rarely what or why.

      Is this what you refer to?:

      Page last updated at 10:14 GMT, Friday, 12 December 2008

      If so (I see nothing else), I think this still goes on, and is absolutely honoured in the abuse as well as being pretty useless.

      Sometimes they stealth edit anyway without admitting it, and there is no clue as to what was changed.

      Again, a few soon to be shared complaints of mine have exchanges where the BBC says 'It looks fine' to which I reply 'But it didn't, which is why I complained'. Bit of to'ing and fro'ing until they grasp I have the page grab and then they start with the 'Ah... but... the story evolved...' nonsense.

      It is basically a licence to lie with impunity.

      Look forward to how you FoI on version archives works out. It's a good seam.

      Refusing to release what was published originally as journalism using exemption on the basis of it being... journalism will be a quaint one to see explained by the BBC.

      I'll look out for that.

      Delete
  5. So the BBC refused my FOI on the matter, hiding behind their exemption. No surprises there then. Yet I find it sheer hypocrisy that they're grubbily working through the Price Charles letters that have been obtained by the very process they're enjoying exemption from.

    When I commented the same on the news article on their web site - they then censored it and removed the comment. I was fairly polite about it as well.
    I can understand this from the point of view of defending journalistic integrity (sources etc) but this gross obduration over previously published content is insulting. I wonder whether, when they negotiated these opt outs, illustrations were drawn up highlighting when and where they could refuse FOI. If we could prove that they've deviated from the originally intended use case then we could have grounds to get something done about it.

    So I wonder whether the discussions around FOI (meeting minutes etc) are available themselves under FOI request?

    ReplyDelete

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