Complaint
These items included information from an unnamed source described as the head or boss of an NHS trust, to the effect that he had asked a Ö÷²¥´óÐã correspondent for help in contacting Barbour and Burberry with a view to remedying an acute shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE) in his trust.Ìý It emerged in the afternoon of 17 April that the source was not in charge of an NHS trust, but was Chief Operating Officer of Oxford Academic Health Science Network.Ìý Four people complained to the ECU that, irrespective of the identity of the source, the story was indicative of bias against the Government in relation to its efforts to ensure the availability of appropriate PPE in the NHS, some of them arguing that it was so implausible that a source holding a position of seniority would need to approach the Ö÷²¥´óÐã for such information that a political motive had to be suspected.Ìý Three of them also stressed the seriousness of the inaccuracy.Ìý The ECU considered the complaints raised potential issues under the Ö÷²¥´óÐã’s Editorial Guidelines concerning impartiality and accuracy.
Outcome
ImpartialityÌý
Having investigated the circumstances in detail, the ECU concluded there were no grounds for suspecting a political motive.Ìý The reporter concerned is a member of the Business and Economics Unit of Ö÷²¥´óÐã News, and had been tasked since early on in the Covid-19 outbreak with monitoring and reporting on issues around the supply of PPE to health care workers, bringing to the task extensive previous expertise in the clothing industry.Ìý An organisation which promotes UK manufacture, which he had dealt with often before, suggested he contacted the source in connection with a shortage of PPE in a particular area of the NHS.Ìý He did so about a week before the story broke on 16 April and they had several phone conversations subsequently.Ìý In the course of these conversations the source became aware, by reading an item on the Ö÷²¥´óÐã website, that Barbour and Burberry were making protective gowns.Ìý The business reporter had been working concurrently on an item about Barbour and their involvement in PPE production.Ìý So, although the source could undoubtedly have obtained information about contacting those companies elsewhere, it was entirely natural in the circumstances that he should have asked the business reporter.Ìý Although it transpired that the source was not in fact the head of an NHS trust, he did have a concern with PPE availability in the NHS (see below), so the ECU saw no grounds for doubting the genuineness of his enquiry or adducing a political motive.Ìý Consequently the ECU found no breach of the Ö÷²¥´óÐã’s standards of impartiality in this respect.Ìý
Not upheld
AccuracyÌý
It was not in dispute that the items which described the source as the head of an NHS trust were inaccurate in that respect.Ìý The ECU’s investigation established that the inaccuracy originally arose when the organisation which contacted the business reporter spoke of a source who “oversees an NHS trustâ€, which the business reporter took to mean that he was the head of a trust.Ìý He recollects that the source referred to “my trust†on several occasions during their conversations, which reinforced his original misapprehension.Ìý The erroneous information entered the public domain via a series of tweets posted by the business reporter from about 5.30pm onwards on 16 April.Ìý The tweets came to the attention of a health correspondent who was working on a report for that evening’s 10pm News on Ö÷²¥´óÐã One about shortages of PPE based on information from a number of NHS sources.Ìý After conversations involving the output editor of that night’s bulletin, the health correspondent and the business reporter, it was decided to incorporate information from the tweets into the report.Ìý During these conversations, the business reporter did not name his source, for fear of jeopardising an agreement with him to provide an on-the-record interview the following day, and the description of him as the head of an NHS trust passed into the news agenda without further verification.Ìý There was then nothing to prevent the error being replicated when the story was picked up on Radio 4, Radio 5 Live and Ö÷²¥´óÐã One the following morning (concurrently the business reporter had written a more detailed piece for Ö÷²¥´óÐã News Online which was posted around midnight).Ìý
On the morning of 17 April the source gave an on-the-record interview for use in an item in that day’s edition of the 1pm News on Ö÷²¥´óÐã One.Ìý Shortly before transmission of the item it emerged (from a discussion about how he should be captioned on screen) that the source was not the head of an NHS trust but the Chief Operating Officer of Oxford Academic Health Science Network.Ìý The fact that he had been erroneously described in previous reports was drawn to the attention of the senior management of Ö÷²¥´óÐã News shortly after transmission of the item.Ìý After establishing the precise facts, Ö÷²¥´óÐã News took the view that, although not the head of an NHS trust, the source was credible in relation to supplies of PPE, and was speaking from expertise in that area and first-hand knowledge of the situation in a particular trust[1]; that what he said was consistent with an array of information, much of it from NHS sources, about shortage of PPE (protective gowns in particular), concerns in that area having been acknowledged by the Health Secretary that morning; and that his information would probably have featured in News outlets even if his role had been accurately described at the outset.Ìý Ö÷²¥´óÐã News also acknowledged, however, that the erroneous description of him was a serious inaccuracy which required proportionate corrective action.Ìý As a result, a revised version of the online article, incorporating a correction, was posted at 6.43pm on 17 April; a separate online article, under the headline “Ö÷²¥´óÐã correction on Burberry coronavirus pleaâ€, was posted at 9pm on 17 April; corrections were also broadcast in that evening’s edition of the 10pm News and, on the morning of 18 April, in all the other outlets which had broadcast the original inaccuracy; and, finally, a correction was posted on the Corrections and Clarifications page of the Ö÷²¥´óÐã website on 20 April.
In the light of these points, the ECU agreed that the error complained of represented a serious breach of the Ö÷²¥´óÐã’s standards of accuracy, though not one which would have misled audiences materially in relation to their understanding of the issue of PPE availability in the NHS.Ìý In view of this, the ECU judged that the corrective action taken by Ö÷²¥´óÐã News was proportionate, and sufficient for it to conclude that the issue of complaint in relation to accuracy had been resolved.
Resolved
[1] Hence the ECU’s conclusion, above, that “he did have a concern with PPE availability in the NHSâ€.