Correct/Clarifty

After a nearly two month gap where nothing happened, the BBC's Corrections and Clarifications has finally jerked back into life and posted another correction/clarification - an unusually quick one.

Today

BBC Radio 4, Monday 13 December

In an item about the rise in infections caused by Omicron and its impact on the NHS we said: ‘NHS England says between 20 and 30 per cent of critical care beds are occupied by Covid patients.... three quarters of those haven't been vaccinated.’

We also said that the ‘vast majority’ of those in critical care are unvaccinated. In fact, the most recent figures from the Intensive Care and National Audit Research Centre (ICNARC) show that 51% of intensive care patients in England with Covid in November were vaccinated and 48% were not.

15/12/2021

As ever, the BBC here protects the identity of 'the guilty party' at the BBC responsible for getting this so badly wrong. But, using TVEyes, it was quite easy to track down Martha Kearney as the one incorrectly laying emphasis on it being the ''vast majority'' [twice, at 6.55am and 8.39am - the later time before asking her interviewee if he thought it was time for ''compulsory'' vaccines].

In fairness to Martha, she was probably fed the false fact by inept elements of the Today journalistic team and simply parroted it. But I'd have hoped for better from her and that she'd have fact-checked it herself before repeating it [repeatedly].

Maybe BBC Trendling's Mike Wendling could free up a few of his disinformation team to reality-check the BBC itself for fake news and disinformation?