After the General Election result the Tories, in their desperation to check the ‘Corbyn surge’, started claiming that the Labour leader had rowed back on a supposed promise to cancel existing student debts.
This was an outright lie.
Labour’s manifesto had promised to end tuition fees – and the single interview on which the Tories and their media allies based their lie did not say what they claimed. The lie was thoroughly debunked on the SKWAWKBOX and elsewhere.
However, the BBC is still propagating it:
https://twitter.com/RobiMous2/status/912584859230654464
The Twitter thread makes clear that multiple viewers witnessed Naga Munchetty repeating the falsehood to viewers today on national television. Ms Munchetty may have been genuinely mistaken; most likely she was just repeating the script or briefing given to her.
Either way, it’s about a billion miles short of good enough for the national broadcaster we all pay for to be repeating not just Tory propaganda but already-discredited Tory lies as fact.
It would be well for the BBC and/or Ms Munchetty to retract the false allegation as publicly as they made it. Sadly, that is extremely unlikely to happen.
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