Partly Upheld

 

At the height of the BLM protests last year the BBC's News at Ten broadcast a report about the Bengal Famine that proved highly controversial, especially regarding accusations against Winston Churchill.

Our view, as expressed at the time, ran as follows:

Both last Monday's Today programme and last Monday's BBC One News at Ten featured reports by BBC journalist Yogita Limaye, and she clearly felt no obligation whatsoever to show fairness and impartiality. 

Her pieces were nothing more than concerted efforts to brand Winston Churchill a racist and hold him responsible for the 1943 Bengal Famine.

It generally aroused concerns that the activist foxes were taking over the chicken coop. 

Well, the BBC's Executive Complaints Unit has finally got round to ruling on complaints about this report - and by 'finally' I mean it's taken over 13 months to resolve - and it's partly exonerated Yogita Limaye's piece. But only partly. And what it upholds is that in the ECU’s judgement...:

...more exploration of alternative views of Churchill’s actions and motives in relation to the Bengal famine was required to meet the standard of impartiality appropriate to a report in a news bulletin of this kind. This aspect of the complaint was upheld

Or to put it another way, it wasn't fair and it wasn't impartial.