Wednesday, 30 January 2019

My complaint to the BBC about their 'Covington boys' article




This is the current version of the article in question, (marked as published 20 Jan):
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-46935701
This is the earliest version on Internet Archive captured at 07:53 Jan 20
https://web.archive.org/web/20190120075324/https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-46935701

A second article was published the following day (21 Jan), the current version is here:
 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-46943364
This is the earliest version on Internet Archive:
https://web.archive.org/web/20190121121301/https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-46943364

A 1hr46m YouTube video of the entire incident marked as published on 20 Jan:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3EC1_gcr34

Another short video pub 20 Jan:
https://twitter.com/Uncle_Jimbo/status/1086796139817504768 

Another short video pub 19 Jan:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npX801xLSFY

 MY COMPLAINT TO THE BBC (sent 20 Jan, aprox midnight)


  
Your article on the BBC homepage: "Teens taunting Native American sparks outcry" is objectively incorrect, especially that headline. It is clear that BBC journalists did not properly research the available material. Instead a subjective and uninformed opinion dictated an assumption of what occured. The video you have linked to in your article is edited in a manner as to be deceptive, but regardless shows no evidence of any harrasment or taunting towards the man.

  If you view these videos
 its clear that the incident that was videod is a consequence of the drumming man aproaching and submerging himself among the crowd of boys. He then walks to one particular child and bangs his drum right in his face. In response, the boy stands there and remains unbudged, what else can he do? There is no taunting from the boy or any of the boys. In fact from the wider view its clear the only interpretation of any intimidation can only be attributed to the drumming man. It is irresponsible to publish the face of an minor on the homepage of the BBC news that apears to attribute guilt of harrasment and intimidation to him.

 It is my understanding that this child is now subject to online abuse, including death threats and threats of violence. Your irresponsible article cannot be helping. This falls far below the high standard of journalism that the BBC claims to uphold. I think it is incumbent on the BBC to update the article with notice of the changes and the reason for the changes. The BBC also now owes an apology to the child, as well as the other children the BBC have disserved. The BBC news department needs to have an internal conversation with regards to how this missrepresetative reporting occured and the journalists responsible must be held to account for their serious and consequential error.

 --


THE BBC:


Dear Mr
Thank you for getting in touch about our article reporting that footage of a group of teenagers taunting a Native American man in Washington DC has drawn criticism.

We received a range of feedback on this article and so apologise in advance if this response does not address every specific concern that you’ve raised.

We initially published the article after footage of the incident went viral on social media, prompting a range of criticism and an apology from the school which condemned “the actions of the Covington Catholic High School students towards Nathan Phillips specifically, and Native Americans in general”.

Additional video footage subsequently emerged which provided further details of the incident, while the main student visible in the original clip, Nick Sandmann, issued a statement in which he denied mocking Mr Phillips and said the students had only used school chants and he had not heard anyone make hateful or racist remarks.

We reported these developments in a second article (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-46943364) which outlined the conflicting accounts from the day.

We have since added an update note to the first article, linking to the second, so that those reading are aware of these later developments.

We hope you will find this satisfactory and thank you once again for getting in touch.

Kind Regards

BBC Complaints Team
www.bbc.co.uk/complaints

--

MY REPLY:


Thank you for your reply. I appreciate that.
I appreciate that you have understood that there is an issue, and that you have gone some way to make amends.
Also, It has not gone unnoticed that Andrew Neil, albeit as a passing comment on his BBC TV show 'This Week', admitted the BBC had made a mistake here.
However I am not entirely satisfied with what you say here, moreover I now have a further complaint regarding your published corrections to the article.

What I have found most egregious since you published your original article is that while you (the BBC journalists working on this article) have made alterations to the article with notification of the change, chiefly the correction of your false claim that Mr.Philips was a Vietnam war veteran, you have made other alterations to the article without notification of those changes
which has added the line:
'In separate footage later shared on social media, Mr Phillips is seen approaching the boys as he sings.'


Where the line above does not exist. It was added later. Without notification.
The omission of this contextual observation was the main thrust of my original complaint.


Nowhere in your post hoc corrective footnotes do you say that you have added this line to the article. This is unethical journalism, and I should not have to tell you why.
Unnotified edits to articles, particularly omission of important context like this, makes anyone that uses you as a source look deceptively unreliable when it is you that is acting unreliably.
There are also some other examples and very important issues, I hope you'll provide an email or the like for my opportunity to inform you, but I've run out of characters here..

(Web form reaches its character limit)



 

                                                                                                              

The other points:



There are also some other examples of unnotified alterations to this article, as evidenced by my screengrabs...


Detail of unnotified changes:

Original:
JANUARY 20, 2019
07:53:24
(I also recall from memory that the headline had already changed from '...Sparks Outcry' to '...Draws Fire' by this version archived on IA
another conspicuous change earlier in the article was the change from 'teens' to 'teenagers' ):
URL is highlighted to demonstrate it is the same article.



Current:
JANUARY 30, 2019
13:00 aprox
Highlighted sentence has been added without notification
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-46935701 
.
The fact (which you omitted and then added without notification) that it was the drumming man that had approached the boys, who were waiting for a bus, begs the question, who, if anyone, was taunting who? In the context (that was available at the time of publishing the article) that the boys' school chants were not a response to the native Americans gathered, but clearly a response that was an attempt to drown out the racist, sexist, homophobic antisemetic bigotry and violence incitement that both the boys and the native Americans there had been exposed and subjected to by another group present, the judgement that the boys were taunting the drumming man is at best subjective, at worst a misrepresentation compounded by the 'lie of omission' regarding the drumming man approaching the boys. It is in no sense objective journalism to say the boys were taunting the man, and it remains unethical to confer this judgement on the minors as though it were fact. At the time of writing this email, this remains uncorrected.

'The other group present'

In addition to not having addressed (in your corrections or anywhere else) the allegation (that appears in the headline and body text) that the boys were 'taunting' the drumming man, neither is the allegation that appears in the body text that they were 'mocking' the man. In the context that was available at the time you went to publication, it is clear that the boys were not sure what was going on when the drumming man approached and that likely many or most or maybe all thought the drumming man was 'allying' himself with them in their school chants that were an attempt to drown out the stream of goading bigotry that both the boys and the drumming man (and a group he was associated with) were exposed to and taunted with, for about an hour previous, by another group that was present there. This perception that he may have been an 'ally' would be why the boys echoed and mimicked the rhythms and chants of the drumming man. It is clear to me that it is not mockery in the sense that it has been represented in your article. Opinions can (and do) differ on whether it was mockery or not, which only serves to illustrate that it is subjective. The article was not an opinion piece and to report as fact that the minors were mocking the man is unethical. At the time of writing this reply, this remains uncorrected.


Nor am I satisfied with the placement of the corrective (yet incomplete) 'footnotes'; they ought to appear at the top of the article so that the reader is aware the article is flawed.
I notice you have made a similar footnote correction to your the article that was published in the context of the teenager's statement the following day. There are further problems with the way this subsequent article is written and it reads like a defence of your error in the first article. The claim that the drumming man 'was surrounded by the students' is misleading and deceptive, perpetuating the deception of the video that originally went viral. The citation to back up your claim that the phrase ' 'Build the wall' was 'chanted' is incorrect as the citation source states that the phrase was 'heard', not chanted (you correctly claim there is no audio evidence of the phrase at all, this in despite the amount of footage available). The final line of the article 'Trump supporters and conservative groups argue that they are unfairly picked on by left-wing groups and the media'  is not objective journalism, but an opinion made without citation, most likely based on the high number of complaints you have received for this article. Given that I am neither a Trump supporter nor a member of any conservative group, and that I know (and can cite on request) critics of the USA president, centrists and progressives who are also critical of the complicity of the media in perpetuating this misrepresentation of the Covington boys, I wonder how the BBC can justify such collective judgements of individuals? It appears to be evidence of tribalistic, collectivist thinking. I have not had a look to see if similar unnotified corrections like the ones I've highlighted for the first article were made on this second article as well, but the article reads like an attempt to correct the record and I think the fact that you are trying to make corrections to your corrections to your corrections speaks for itself.

The evident collectivist thinking I've just highlighted leads me to my damning opinion as to the reason for this botch... its the hat. The 'MAGA' hat was instrumental in your judgement of the individuals based on your opinion of a perceived group they belonged to that was made before judging them fairly and objectively (which didn't require much research). There is a word for pre-judgement of individuals by perceived group membership. It has become a familiar occurrence for what I refer to as the 'Twitter outrage mob' to jump to such conclusions and vilify the out-group or demonise (often also persecute) one of its perceived members based on resentment of 'the out group' when material that is deliberately skewed to trigger ideological resentment is released into the public domain. In this instance though, it appears that the output of mainstream and corporate media has shared in this role. This accounts for the quick but unnecessary apology made by the school; it could be said to have been bullied out of them and I have heard but can't confirm that they have reversed this position and are now preparing to take legal action against some media outlets. I suppose that may include the BBC.
The real story here is not the actions of the boy or the boys (to whom you owe an apology if you have not given it already), or even the drumming man or the other individuals present.. the story here is about you, ie the exposed prejudice held by BBC journalists and your peers. The teenage boys behaviour in this instance was at worst unremarkable if not remarkably sensible, commendably curious, restrained and tolerant given the verbal abuse they were exposed to for an hour. Your articles may be the extent of the BBC's error in what has happened in this instance. However, after much of the USA media output made much the same error in what is evidently a culturally orthodox groupthink amongst yourselves and your peers, violent threats and incitement to violence towards these teenage boys were made publicly by individuals including high profile 'entertainers' and commentators. This incident reads to me like a journalism test that the BBC failed. Individuals at the BBC, beholden to a groupthink within the media culture and by use of unethical practises of journalism, were complicit in perpetuating and doubling down on a deceit that may have ruined the lives of some minors and put them at risk of physical danger. It is this prejudicial culture evident amongst the journalists responsible, their bias confirming colleagues and peers that is, at least in part, polarising culture to a dangerous degree.


As I say, though, I appreciate that you have understood that there is an issue, and that you have gone some way to make amends.
As a final point of interest, in writing this, it occurs to me that Wikipedia's method of documentation - Eg all versions and authors of versions and corrections are recorded and are publicly accessible and that all citations are noted where possible and where citations are not possible, the absence of the required citation is highlighted - is a technically achievable form of documentation to which maybe online journalism ought to aspire to replicate.











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