From journalism.co.uk:
The sourcing and fact checking process for stories on the BBC News website must be addressed by management, the BBC trust Editorial Standards Committee has recommended.
The committee made the suggestions as part of its response to a complaint about an article on the site, which pointed to inaccuracies in the report on Congressman Joseph P Kennedy II’s marriage to Sheila Rauch.
During the complaints procedure, the online news team conceded to oversimplifying the story and admitted that this could mislead the reader.
From the committee’s findings:
- The article had been fundamentally flawed and the complainant had provided useful and accurate information to assist the web team in correcting the story.
- The web team should have acted more quickly in its responses to the complainant to ensure the story was corrected sooner than it was.
- The wider issue of sourcing and checking stories for the news website was something for BBC management to address.
- [The committee] would write to BBC management to request it reviews its policies as to the sourcing and checking of material facts within articles prior to publication on the BBC website.
