Complaint
A listener complained a court report on this bulletin was part of a wider pattern of the systematic underreporting of Pakistani grooming gangs and overreporting of cases where the defendants were white. The ECU considered whether the item met the standards for impartiality set out in the BBC Editorial Guidelines.
Outcome
In the ECU’s view, BBC News was entitled to provide an accurate summary of the sentencing of members of a grooming gang, which included the fact the members were white. The accurate reporting of court proceedings did not amount to persuasive evidence of bias or support an allegation of “an inappropriate political or social engineering agenda”. The reporting of other court cases involving grooming gangs had to be judged separately from this case because of the unique nature of each trial.
Not Upheld