Screen-grabbing the BBC

You may recall a post here at ITBB a few days ago about the BBC's online reporting of UKIP candidate Kim Rose and his quoting of Hitler in order to condemn the European Union.

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.