BBC fails to give credit where it's due

Always keen to help out a struggling news organisation, The New World reached out yesterday to the BBC with a great story: the Royal Society is to consider expelling Elon Musk from its ranks following his speech to Tommy Robinson’s march at the weekend.

A BBC reporter was handed the story on a plate by our PR company and duly published it online yesterday evening — carelessly forgetting to mention the source of the tale, as is absolutely standard practice in journalism. It’s almost as though the BBC were trying to give the impression they had come up with the scoop themselves.

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Emails to the reporter and her boss at BBC News, politely asking for the usual link back to The New World to be inserted, have gone unanswered.

Since nobody has ever accused the BBC newsroom of being arrogant and aloof, there must be another reason for this failure to correct such poor behaviour. Perhaps the Corporation’s rock-solid support from a possible incoming Reform government means they can afford to irritate other media? (I thought Farage wanted to shut them down? – Ed.)

Either way, it might serve as a word of warning to other PRs thinking about handing the corporation stories in the future – lest their forgetfulness prove not to be a one-off.