Crikey! Anthony Reuben (Head of Statistics at the BBC) has been nobbled again.
After having has his piece questioning the UN Human Rights Council's dodgy figures over civilian deaths in Gaza doctored by the BBC, he's now had his Reality Check article on George Osborne's dodgy £4,300 a year claim doctored too - the one where he described George Osborne's claim 'killer' assertion that families would lose £4,300 a year from Brexit as "not true".
As per Guido Fawkes, Mr. Reuben's verdict that the Chancellor's claim was "not true" has now been edited out of existence. And it's been done on the sly too ('stealth edited', as people say).
If (like me) you can't read it from that image, the first version said:
The poster at George Osborne's event this morning was very clear - that there would be a £4,300-a-year cost to families by 2030 if Britain leaves the EU.
It's not true. The government is confusing GDP per household with household income.
The toned-down version says:
The poster at George Osborne's event this morning made a bold claim - that there would be a £4,300-a-year cost to families by 2030 if Britain leaves the EU.
The government is confusing GDP per household with household income.
Someone has clearly leaned on the BBC here.
Ah, but 'leaned on' in a non-interfering way, which the BBC high command would never allow anyway.
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I hadn't noticed they did this. NewsSniffer is as usual very revealing of the process:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.newssniffer.co.uk/articles/1133940/diff/3/4
It went from "It's not true" to "that's just plain misleading" to nothing. It seems to have happened within a couple hours of posting. Craig Oliver strikes again. So much for this being a trustworthy reality check if they have to pull punches when pressured.
I am still convinced that the BBC has made an agreement with Cameron on the issues of the EU and immigration in exchange for that deal last year.
Well-spotted. NewsSniffer is such a valuable tool.
DeleteSo it took four-and-a-half hours in total for all criticism to be exorcised.
Reality Check must have had the riot act read to them - they had fallen in line this lunchtime, helpfully rubbishing the £350 million cost of the EU claim from Vote Leave. Thankfully Farage wasn't having any of it and batted it out of the ground for six, even though - to mix metaphors - it was an own goal for the Leave campaign to use the gross figure, ignoring the rebate.
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