While the British right celebrates embarrassing the BBC over a misleading editorial error, double standards are everywhere.
As revealed by The New World’s James Ball, the man whose dossier started the whole thing by complaining that Donald Trump’s January 6, 2021 speech had been doctored – former Sunday Times political editor Michael Prescott – himself doctored Trump’s quotes himself in his controversial report, making them seem far more benign than they actually were.
Meanwhile, the Daily Mail spent days attacking the corporation for lying, then had to admit that a quote it had attributed to Today host Nick Robinson about the Beeb’s “fear of making decisions and a fear of the truth” was completely false.
Robinson noted: “Their correction and apology for making up something I never said comes after a week in which it has run, by my last count, six headline pieces condemning me for being, amongst other things, ‘unhinged’ and ‘semi-deranged’.”
As for the Telegraph, the paper to which Prescott’s report was leaked apparently without his consent, it has been forced to make 114 corrections so far this year, as opposed to 33 for the BBC. It has been criticised for “lack of care” by press regulator IPSO over articles that falsely claimed one in 12 people in London was an illegal migrant and that a quarter of sex crimes in the UK were being carried out by “foreigners”. The Telegraph also apologised to readers over a story headlined “We earn £345k, but soaring private school fees mean we can’t afford to go on five holidays”, which also turned out to be complete fabrication.
