Catching up with things...
Newsnight's policy editor Chris Cook took on one of those right-wing think tanks so hated by left-leaning, pro-EU #FBPE types on Twitter - namely, the Institute of Economic Affairs.
The article's original headline was IEA Brexit report based on dubious maths. It began:
Much has been written in the past few months about the Institute of Economic Affairs, the right-wing think tank. But there is one element of its work that could do with more scrutiny: its maths.
Unfortunately for Chris, he also got his maths wrong!
I'm guessing he was attempting to play to the #FBPE gallery but he got some figures mixed up and his fingers burnt.
So what happened next?
Well, I read his original would-be hatchet job on the BBC News website.
And then I saw him insert a very short correction grudgingly admitting to mathematical mistakes on his part, but doing so in two throwaway sentences in the middle of the piece [placed in square parentheses]. The headline by this time had changed to IEA Brexit report pulls up a few questions about methodology.
Then he got the BBC to delete the whole post [and they've done such a thorough job that even the Wayback Machine can't retrieve it]...
... and published a fresh piece headed 'Mea Culpa' (beginning "I am not, it transpires, infallible....") which reads as a considerably-less-than-entirely-apologetic mixture of admission and defiance.
Surprisingly, unlike in that short correction to the original piece, he didn't make it clear what his mistake had been - i.e. that he'd messed up the maths.
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| Now you see it. Now you don't. |
... and published a fresh piece headed 'Mea Culpa' (beginning "I am not, it transpires, infallible....") which reads as a considerably-less-than-entirely-apologetic mixture of admission and defiance.
Surprisingly, unlike in that short correction to the original piece, he didn't make it clear what his mistake had been - i.e. that he'd messed up the maths.
And in a short piece of just 126 words I count four (possibly five) fresh digs at the IEA.
So it's a very 'BBC' apology.
I've got some things spectacularly wrong myself over the years. I think the thing to do when that happens is to properly apologise and give yourself a good Medieval-style self-scourging. Don't keep lashing out.
And I learn from a loyal reader that Chris Cook has actually been blocking people on Twitter who have taken him to task over his half-apology.
Also very 'BBC'...(well, for the time being anyhow).
