Facebook pulls down Conservative advert that ‘doctored’ BBC headline The Conservatives advert altered a BBC headline to include a disputed claim about a ‘£14 billion cash boost for schools’

Facebook has removed a Conservative Party advert that manipulated a BBC headline to include a disputed claim about schools spending.

The Conservative Party advert, which has been shown to Facebook users at least 222,000 times since its launch on 2 September, featured a BBC logo above the headline: “£14 billion cash boost for schools”.

However, the advert linked to a BBC article about Boris Johnson’s spending plans that actually used a different headline and disputed his £14 billion figure.

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The article had concluded: “Describing this as a £14bn increase would make the government seem more generous than it is in fact being.”

On Saturday, Facebook confirmed to the BBC that it has removed the advert after independent body Full Fact, which is part of Facebook’s own fact-checking partnership, said it was misleading.

Misleading and inappropriate

A Facebook spokesperson added: “We are working to put safeguards in place to ensure publishers have control over the way their headlines appear in advertisements.”

Full Fact had said: “This is misleading, particularly for readers who don’t click through to the article. It makes it appear that the BBC endorsed the £14 billion figure, when in fact they criticised it.

“It’s inappropriate for political parties, or any public body, to misrepresent the work of independent journalists in this way.”

Disputed spending figure

The fact-checking body had previously concluded the £14 billion figure itself is “not technically inaccurate, [but] may well be misleading”, because it is comprised of funding spread across several years, rather than a boost to the annual schools budget.



It said: “Adding several years of spending together is simply not the normal way politicians talk about spending increases.

“They most commonly refer to spending on a per-year basis, or talking about the difference between the first and final year of spending. It’s not factually wrong—but it could be misleading.”

Full Fact noted: “A number of news outlets chose not to report the £14 billion figure for that reason.”

A Conservative Party spokesperson said: “It was not our intention to misrepresent by using this headline copy with the news link, where the BBC’s £7 billion figure is clearly displayed, but we are reviewing how our advert headlines match accompanying links.”

The decision to pull the advert comes weeks after the Advertising Standards Authority banned a Home Office ad that had suggested EU citizens could gain settled status in the UK with just a “passport or ID card.”

The ASA ruled that the advert was misleading because people had been required to “submit further documents” to gain settled status.