Complaint
The guests in the newspaper review section of the programme included Trevor Philips, who was himself in the news because of protests against his appointment to conduct an inquiry into disproportionate death rates from Covid-19 among BAME people. In the course of commenting on the stories, Mr Philips named the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) as “The people who are making a big deal of this†and went on to say they were aligning themselves with a group which had named President Obama as an Islamophobe and attacked the staff of Charlie Hebdo in similar terms in the weeks after 12 of them had been killed. The MCB complained that both statements were inaccurate, and that Mr Philips had been inappropriately presented as a dispassionate expert when in fact he was a controversial figure in relation to the topic under discussion.
Outcome
It would have been clear to listeners that Mr Philips was not speaking as a dispassionate expert but as the subject of a current controversy. Although the MCB were not the only source of criticism of Mr Philips’ appointment, he was entitled to express his view that they were the main instigators, and the presenter included a quote setting out the MCB’s own view on the matter. The ±«Óãtv was not in a position to substantiate the statement that the MCB were aligned with the group described by Mr Philips but, independently of the ECU’s enquiries, ±«Óãtv News made a posting on the Corrections and Clarifications page of bbc.co.uk to make clear that the MCB said they were not aligned with the group in question and did not support its comments. In the ECU’s judgement, this sufficed to resolve the issue of complaint.
Resolved