Is it too much to ask for the BBC to get anything right? Take this quote for example:
[Chamali] Fernando is a barrister from Finchley, who says he plans to put forward issues, ask tough questions and campaign across London.
He wants to present Liberal Democracy “as the tonic for Londoners from all walks of life”.
What is wrong with this picture? Well, as a quick google or even, radical I know, glance at the Lib Dem website will tell you, Chamali is a woman.
But it gets worse because, while the Guardian has a reader’s editor, the BBC doesn’t even have a decent complaints system. I can’t just click on a link by the article to submit a correction; nor is there a dedicated email address. The best I can do is to make a “general” comment which, on past form, will – if it achieves anything – result in a news editor making a patronising remark about how I am in fact wrong.
Or, as has already been pointed out, they will quietly correct it and not acknowledge that they ever made the mistake in the first place. Keep your eye out for this story cropping up on Revisionista.
I’ve had a pretty good record of them correcting obvious factual errors like this quickly if reported through their feedback system – but, as you say, there’s no way of knowing subsequently that it was ever wrong.
And it’s now corrected!
The BBC have a “Last updated” field, but make no mention of why and how.
The Beeb are at least outplaying the Indy, who appear to believe that the aptly-named shortlist consists solely of Brian Paddick. Which begs the question of whether, philosophically speaking, poor old Chamali and Fiyaz actually have a gender until they exist in print.