Complaint
This online item reported that Joshua Kim, who won the sixth seat at Blaenau Gwent Caerffili Rhymni for Reform UK in May’s Senedd elections, had missed the count because he was doing a shift as a supply teacher. Mr Kim complained that the report was inaccurate in a number of respects. In response, BBC Wales acknowledged that some comments attributed to him in the report reflected the observations of the reporter rather than what Mr Kim had said on the night, and that it conveyed the incorrect impression that he had given the BBC a one-to-one interview whereas he had declined the invitation to do so. Explanatory notes to this effect were added to the report, but Mr Kim complained to the ECU that the report required further correction in two respects: it was incorrect to say “The returning officer spent a few minutes trying to find him and couldn't quite believe he wasn’t in the hall. He turned up about 45 minutes after as the hall was being reset for a football match”, and the statement that he had been “speaking to reporters” was also untrue because the remarks correctly attributed to him in the report were made in an interview with a single reporter from a local newspaper. The ECU considered the complaint in the light of the BBC’s editorial standards of accuracy.
Outcome
In connection with the two matters of dispute, the ECU considered statements from those present provided by Mr Kim and BBC Wales. On the balance of evidence, the ECU judged that the article’s account of Mr Kim’s whereabouts during the count was accurate. In relation to the statement that he had been speaking to “reporters”, the ECU noted that recollections among those present varied and, in the absence of definitive evidence such as a video recording, was unable to reach a view about the accuracy of the statement. However, it considered that whether what Mr Kim said was addressed to one reporter or many was immaterial to readers’ understanding of the point of this element of the report, which was to convey how he had expressed himself on learning that he had won the seat, and that there had been no breach of the BBC’s editorial standards in that respect. The ECU therefore concluded that the actions already taken by BBC Wales were sufficient to resolve the issues of editorial standards identified in Mr Kim’s complaint.
Resolved
