Sloppiness

 

Luxmy Gopal, not the first female newsreader

This week's Newswatch with Samira Ahmed began with viewers complaining about BBC journalistic ''sloppiness'' after the BBC News Channel's 4pm headlines on Wednesday said this:

The Prime Minister is re- shuffling his top team of government ministers. In the past few minutes, the former Trade Secretary Liz Truss has been appointed Foreign Secretary, the first woman to hold the role.

I checked that out at the time and found that the BBC corrected it within 7 minutes, noting that Labour's Margaret Beckett had got there first [in 2006]. 

It was a bit 'sloppy' but I didn't think it was worth pointing out here given the speed of the correction and the fact that such things can happen during 'breaking news'. 

I didn't realise till Newswatch though that this wasn't an isolated example. The mistake was repeated on the following morning's Today programme...

More ministerial appointments are expected to be announced today after Boris Johnson carried out an extensive cabinet reshuffle yesterday. Liz Truss became the first female Foreign Secretary after Dominic Raab was demoted to Justice Secretary.

...''and elsewhere'', as Samira put it.