Corporation released complaints figures – dominated by reaction to Panorama anti-Labour episode
The BBC has released its complaints figures for the period 8-21 July. Across that full two-week period, it received 6,551 complaints, with 1,593 – nearly a quarter – related to the BBC’s Panorama programme “Is Labour antisemitic”:
Labour criticised the programme at the time of its broadcast as a ‘hatchet-job‘ and pointed out that it contained major inaccuracies, including innocuous emails doctored so that they appeared damning, such as a response to a request for input that was presented as ‘interference’.
SKWAWKBOX view:
The proportion of complaints about a single programme was unusual enough that the BBC felt obliged to try to explain it, claiming it was linked to an online call for complaints. Of course, that does nothing to explain away why so may people felt outraged enough to act on it.
The programme was widely derided on its broadcast for its unsubstantiated claims and its misrepresentation of supposed Labour ‘whistleblowers’ who in fact have well-known and chequered histories – and who all or almost all belonged to the same anti-Corbyn group, although the programme failed to mention it. So poor was it that only the most die-hard opponents of the Labour Party seemed to feel able to try to exploit it.
Yet the BBC continues to insist that it ‘stands by its journalism’. Appalling.
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