THE BBC has issued a ruling about a report in which Sarah Smith said the First Minister had “enjoyed the opportunity” to set different Covid-19 lockdown rules to the rest of the UK.
The corporation’s Executive Complaints Unit (ECU) published its ruling following the BBC News at Ten report which sparked a row back in May.
Speaking during lockdown the BBC’s Scotland editor reported that the First Minister had “enjoyed the opportunity to make her own different lockdown rules”. Nicola Sturgeon hit back at the claim on Twitter, telling Smith she had never “’enjoyed’ anything less than this”.
READ MORE: Covid-19: Sarah Smith apologises for Nicola Sturgeon claim
In its ruling, the ECU says it “agreed that viewer of the 10pm bulletin might well have formed the impression that Ms Smith was expressing an opinion about Ms Sturgeon’s motives, and that giving such an impression was out of keeping with the BBC’s standards of due impartiality”.
However, it went on to note several tweets made by Smith offering Sturgeon an explanation and an apology.
The reporter tweeted via her BBC account to say: “I do not believe that @NicolaSturgeon is enjoying this crisis. I had meant to say on the 10 o’clock news that she has ‘embraced’ the opportunity to make a policy unique to Scotland. I said ‘enjoyed’ by mistake. Not suggesting she is enjoying crisis but embracing devolution.”
In a further post, Smith wrote: “For the avoidance of any doubt. I am sorry that by mistake I said on the news last night that @NicolaSturgeon was ‘enjoying the opportunity’ to set lockdown policy in Scotland. That was not what I meant to say and I apologise to her for my error.”
The ECU noted that in a similar report from the May 18 6pm BBC news bulletin, Smith used the phrase “embraced the opportunity” rather than enjoyed.
It went on: “The ECU regarded the word ‘embraced’ as a term which described the First Minister’s approach without imputing motive, and viewed its use in this earlier bulletin as corroborating Ms Smith’s statement that she had simply misspoken in her later interview, rather than offering an opinion on the First Minister’s state of mind.”
The ECU said it agreed that it had been “appropriate” to issue apologies. They added that while it was more “usual” to apologise for an error on air rather than online, because the First Minister had “registered her objection in a tweet” the platform was a “more appropriate medium” for Smith to issue her statement.
The unit concluded: “The ECU therefore found that the action taken was sufficient to resolve the issue of editorial standards raised by the complaints.”
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