Complaint
A listener complained that in the course of the interview with the author Matthew Syed, the presenter Nick Robinson made some inaccurate assertions about the degree to which he had been abused online. The ECU assessed the complaint against the BBC Guidelines on accuracy.
Outcome
Matthew Syed is a BBC Radio Four presenter and Times newspaper columnist who was invited onto the programme to discuss his book called “What Do You Think? How to Agree to Disagree and Still Be Friends”. The discussion that followed was about how children can be taught to take part in discussions and conversations without being intimidated by controversial topics or resorting to insults. Nick Robinson, by way of illustration, mentioned some of the recent insults that he’d been subjected to on social media. In the ECU’s view sufficient evidence exists to support the claim that Mr Robinson is subject to “ad hominem” attacks online and to justify his allusion to two insults he had recently been subjected to on twitter. His intervention was therefore duly accurate.
Not Upheld