Complaint
The programme included an exchange between the presenter, Fiona Bruce, and a panellist about the UK’s Covid testing programme.Β A viewer complained that it had contained inaccuracies, and that the subsequent attempt by Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ News to clarify the position had not been adequate.Β The ECU considered the complaint in the light of the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ’s Editorial Guidelines on accuracy and on correcting mistakes.
Outcome
The issue arose from the panellist’s suggestion that 240,000 tests a day were currently being conducted.Β Ms Bruce said this figure referred to the UK’s capacity for daily testing, and gave the figure of 81,000 as the daily average of people being newly tested.Β Although it was right to point out the important distinction between testing capacity and tests actually carried out, the figure of 81,000 was for England, and was not duly accurate in relation to the UK as a whole.Β This was made clear in the subsequent posting by Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ News on the Corrections and Clarifications page of bbc.co.uk.Β The complainant contested the accuracy of the posting, but it appeared to the ECU that the discrepancy she observed arose from the fact that she had cited the relevant figure for the day of the programme’s transmission while, as Fiona Bruce had made clear, her reference was to what were then the most recent publicly available statistics, which were older and an average across a seven day period.Β The ECU therefore did not agree that posting by Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ News was inadequate for its purpose.
Resolved