BBC Snoozify Verify’s live blog is winding down following the departure of former Head of News Deborah Turness, who launched the live service last June as a “an exciting step towards even greater transparency”. As soon as she was out the door, it was only a matter of time before the new leadership took a cleaver to it. Nobody reads it, and whenever it occasionally posts a story, it is a disaster. Don’t say Guido didn’t warn you…
The Times reports Lindsay McCoy, BBC Verify’s executive editor, gave staff the bad news in an internal memo:
“Unfortunately, the format hasn’t matched how people want to consume our work and it isn’t reaching the audience numbers we would like.
“As a result, we’ve taken the decision to focus our efforts where we can make the greatest impact. That means strengthening our presence on the main BBC News website and live page.”
At its peak, the overall BBC Verify team employed 60 people at a cost of £3.4 million. It remains to be seen what happens to the live blog staff…
One decision for the BBC’s next Director-General and Head of News to decide is whether to continue the Verify project. Over 60 staff at a salary cost to the licence-fee payer of £3.4 million…
Verify was the brainchild of now-outgoing Head of News Deborah Turness, who launched it in 2023 as a “new brand to address the growing threat of disinformation and build trust with audiences by transparently showing how BBC journalists know the information they are reporting.” This was Turness’ first major intervention and one she backed for the three years after in the face of some internal opposition. One BBC source said at the launch:
“She’s clearly bet the farm on this Verify stuff, which a lot of us are a bit sniffy about… Classic BBC, reinventing the wheel so we can say we’ve done it rather than because it’s new or good.”
Nick Robinson said the project wsa all about Turness’ belief that ‘building trust’ “matters above all else…And the way to establish trust with the audience is to show more of your workings.” Think we know how that’s gone…
BBC Verify has fired up its live blog this morning, which Turness launched this year in a sign of her dedication to the brand. A refresh at the broadcaster could prove the right time to take the failed project out back…
The fact-checking ‘specialists’ at BBC Verify were forced to delete a “thoroughly wrong” article accusing car insurance companies of racism, according to a whistleblowing report published in the Telegraph. The report reveals how the self-appointed arbiters of truth (a 60-strong team which costs over £3 million a year) wrote about a so-called “ethnic penalty” within the insurance firms, with the story appearing on BBC Breakfast, the One and Six O’ Clock News, Radio 1, Radio 5 Live and on TikTok. The article remained online for a whopping six months before it was finally deleted…
Michael Prescott, former independent adviser to the BBC’s Editorial Guidelines and Standards Board, wrote in his internal memo:
“BBC audiences were being encouraged to believe Britain’s major insurers were, intentionally or unintentionally, racist, and charging high prices to customers based on their ethnicity… For me, it was hard to imagine UK FTSE boards or executive teams conceiving of or sanctioning a policy to charge ethnic minority customers higher prices.”
Prescott found the story “so unlikely” he demanded an internal review, which exposed “multiple serious editorial problems“. When the BBC top brass were informed of all this, only the direct references to a phantom “ethnic penalty” were cut. Eventually, it was determined the whole article was so bogus it was quietly removed. No one was disciplined. This is the handy work of a team which, when not ‘fact checking’ the existence of dancers in bikinis, is busy congratulating itself on social media for exposing fake news and preaching about how “the truth matters”…
It’s shoulder to the wheel time for BBC Verify’s more than 60 staff on another busy Monday: their first effort to ‘debunk’ disinformation today confirms a picture of a scantily-clad dancer at Donald Trump’s Halloween party is indeed real. The fact-checking ‘specialists’ over at Broadcasting House have, using their advanced verification techniques, “debunked” claims the photo was taken two years ago at Dua Lipa’s bash. Thanks for that…
“The Halloween bash was attended by the US president and several top administration officials, receiving extensive media coverage. We’ve managed to identify where in Mar-A-Lago the image was taken and verified a different video of the dancer at the party.
The BBC is now refusing to reveal how many staff make up its Verify team and how much they are paid. Something to hide?
The corporation is now refusing freedom of information requests on the team numbers and salary because figures “with an increased headcount and combined salary will potentially identify the salary of a small number of new recruits. Therefore, if the BBC disclosed this information it would contravene data protection principles.” Bogus…
The salary costs for BBC Verify are at least £3.4 million and have been rising over the past two years. The value of that team to the taxpayer is not hard to verify…
BBC Verify’s live service is busy “debunking” obviously fake AI images. They’re at it again…
The little-read live service today informed viewers that a “widely circulated” image of “European leaders” sitting in a White House corridor meekly is fake:
“First, take a look at the legs – artificial intelligence often struggles with limbs.
In this case, there seems to an extra pair of legs next to French President Emmanuel Macron.
If we zoom in, we can also see the knees of the woman in red seem to blend into each other and there appears to be an extra high-heeled shoe further down.
The pattern on the floor is also inconsistent – another typical issue with AI-generated images.
There’s an odd blue panel at the front of the image and then the pattern seems to become irregular the further away they are from the viewer.
The women in the picture also bear no resemblance to either Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni or European Commission head Ursula Von Der Leyen.
Their clothes are entirely different from what the real leaders were wearing at the White House.”
Verify staff have form on this – talk about overkill. Other “fact checks” were already done by American news websites 18 hours ago…
The image hasn’t been widely circulated and it is obviously AI-generated – no one character apart from Macron has a passing resemblance to any European leader. BBC Verify staff costs: £3.4 million…
Former leader of the SNP in Westminster Ian Blackford told Times Radio why he believes Nicola Sturgeon’s claim that she spent no time in the kitchen and therefore didn’t see any of her husband’s purchases:
“She doesn’t have a passion for cooking.”
