The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has published a rather interesting “research” paper on fake news and what motivates people to generate and/or share fake news. They attributed the cause to “Nationalism” based on extremely dubious methodology, questionable data collection and shoddy sources. They then removed The Better India from their list after their founder raised questions and demanded an explanation for their name being included.

Another stupendously questionable attribute of the “research” was that they had proclaimed that publications or handles even with a single instance of factually inaccurate news have been included in the list. If that were the case, every single publication in India and abroad should have been included and not just the ones which don’t suit the BBC ideologically, including BBC itself.

Once OpIndia debunked this ‘research’ threadbare, BBC staffers reached out to defend their research and said that their researchers would post a detailed response. That has not happened yet. The research paper has been pulled down and we wait for it to be published again with the explanation that the BBC functionaries say the researchers are preparing.

However, several media personalities and “liberals” from India trashed OpIndia. The standard template was “Now OpIndia will question BBC?”, implying that a desi portal should not have the temerity to question the white, infallible, colonial BBC.

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We can’t blame them completely. Unfortunately, the media space functions based on a code. Like the Omerta. Where questioning each other is considered is frowned upon, and question the white master which is the mothership of entitlement is a cardinal sin.

OpIndia made two grave errors. We did not conform to their liberal bias and we questioned, with irrefutable facts, the infallible, pristine BBC.

However, BBC is not the winged messenger of Jesus as many in India would have us believe. BBC has had a controversial relationship with the truth in the past. Some slips and misses are usual for any publication that releases copious amounts of data every day. The chance of human error can absolutely never be eradicated.

However, when BBC takes the high moral ground and brands other publications as “fake news” without an iota of proof and a severely biased data set and analysis, it becomes imperative to remind them of their own legacy.

It is also imperative to convey to the Sepoys of the West that just because BBC is ‘phoren publication’ certainly doesn’t mean they are infallible. Certainly doesn’t mean that we have to accept the gibberish they throw at us as the insurmountable truth. And definitely doesn’t mean that they are beyond questioning.

To that end, here is a list of some instances where BBC missed sorely.

1. BBC tenders apology for reports about Ethiopia aid money

In 2010, BBC published a series of reports implying that millions of pounds in charity money raised by Live Aid to fight famine in Ethiopia was spent on weapons. They had reported that the aid had been diverted by the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front rebel group in the beleaguered African country to buy guns.

Following these reports, Bob Godolf, who is the founder of Live Aid and Band Aid Trust complained to Office of Communication of the United Kingdom.

The BBC initially announced that it was standing by its report and claimed to have evidence to back up its stance. Then, in November 2010, it conceded that it had no evidence to back its claims up and agreed to run a series of unreserved apologies. In fact, not only did they apologise for their reports, they even apologised to Gedolf because BBC had wrongly claimed that Gedolf had refused to respond to its series of lies about the aid money.

Reportedly, the apology that was broadcast by BBC read:

‘The BBC wishes to apologise unreservedly to the Band Aid Trust for this misleading and unfair impression. The BBC had no evidence for these statements, and they shouldn’t have been broadcast.’

2. Israel dog stoning hoax

On 18th June 2011, BBC published a story about a Jerusalem Court ordering a dog to be stoned to death. The story said that the dog walked into a Jerusalem court and supposedly “reminded a judge of a curse passed on a now deceased secular lawyer about 20 years ago when judges bid his spirit to enter the body of a dog”. Later, the dog was stoned to death per the Court’s orders.

This story turned out to be a hoax. The Jerusalem court summarily denied the story that was reported. On 22nd June, BBC unpublished the story and issued an apology in the form of a blog.

“We failed to make the right checks. We should have never written the article and apologise for any offence caused”, said the BBC retraction.

Many publications often fall for such hoaxes and as long the publication employs a system of checks and balances, issues apology and retracts, all must be forgiven. However, there is a key element to this story. BBC had published this story AFTER their source, Maariv had already published a retraction and an apology on June 15th.

This is the popular, widely reported version. However, we found a different angle to BBC’s fake news altogether. In this article on the portal imediaethics.org, the entire saga is given a whole different context. Firstly, the story was based on one anonymous person’s claim, repeated throughout the international media without a fact check.

The other angle that presents itself is that the BBC story had reportedly failed to mention the Court’s denial in its original story.

The imediaethics.org story states:

The Christian Science Monitor‘s unpacking of the dog hoax spotted that the BBC failed to include one very relevant fact from its source, the YNet report on the dog stoning — the denial of the story from the head of the court, Levin.

Rabbi Avraham Dov Levin “denied that the judges had called for the dog’s stoning,” according to the AFP’s June 17 story.

AFP’s North America editor-in-chief David Milikin told iMediaEthics by e-mail that AFP “killed” its story on its “wires, with an explanation of the source of the erroneous report” June 20.

Even though the BBC failed to include the court’s denial of the stoning account, interestingly the BBC did report an anonymously sourced claim that the stoning had happened.

While the BBC’s story was taken down from its website, it was apparently re-published on RichardDawkins.net. The re-posting states that the BBC reported:

“A court manager told Israeli daily Yediot Aharonot [Ynet] the stoning had been ordered as ‘an appropriate way to ‘get back at’ the spirit which entered the poor dog,’ according to Ynet.”

We asked the BBC, which based its June 18 story on the dog stoning on both the AFP and YNet’s reports on the story, why their reporter excluded the head of the court’s denial of the dog stoning story.

The BBC’s Comms Coordinator Matt Hall responded:

“As we have said in the Editors’ blog we failed to make the right checks. Had we done so, we would not have written the story and we have apologised for any offence caused.”

We also asked why the BBC published its report in the first place since Ma’ariv retracted and apologized for its original report on the dog stoning June 15 — three days before the BBC’s first report.

Hall stated that the BBC “only became aware of the retraction published by the Hebrew-language newspaper Ma’ariv on 20 June,” which is when the BBC reported that the dog stoning story was a hoax.

According to the website, there is another version that proves BBC had failed to report that the Court had denied any such order or the stoning.

The publication also reports that Douglas, a musician who lives and works in London, had email BBC the day the story went viral and had informed them that the story was debunked. Reportedly, BBC, in its response to Douglas had stood by their story.

3. Fake child labour footage from Bangalore

In 2011, BBC’s ‘On The Rack’ aired an investigative report into the fashion giant Primark. The subject of the report was whether Primark can manufacture cheap clothing without resorting to unethical practices. This show was a culmination of 6 months of investigative journalism and an undercover operation.

In the show, they had included footage of 3 children testing stitching in their workshop. The allegations of Primark using child labour damaged their reputation greatly and Primark didn’t take kindly to it. However, after extensive complaints, BBC admitted that the child labour footage was not genuine.

Chairman of the BBC Trust’s editorial standards committee Alison Hastings said (emphasis added): ”The BBC’s investigative journalism is rightly held in very high regard, and for more than 50 years Panorama has made a very significant contribution to that.

”But great investigative journalism must be based on the highest standards of accuracy, and this programme on Primark failed to meet those standards.

”While it’s important to recognise that the programme did find evidence elsewhere that Primark was contravening its own ethical guidelines, there were still serious failings in the making of the programme.