Newsnight’s bare minimum apology barely qualifies as journalism

The BBC has been forced to apologise to Leicester East independent MP Claudia Webbe – after repeating a lie for which the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has already been made to pay compensation to her.

Thursday’s Newsnight programme repeated the wholly untrue claim that Webbe had been found by a court to have threatened to throw acid at her then-fiancé’s lover – but the court found that she definitively did not make any such threat.

The smear was repeated by Newsnight hack Joe Pike on his Twitter feed – and rapidly deleted after Webbe rightly warned him it was untrue.

Your report is libellous. There was no threat or violence. It was a deliberate lie. Denied a Jury. There was an appeal. Appeal Judge said person was an "unsatisfactory witness" who "told lies". I’m told I must give you an opportunity to review and remove your @BBCNewsnight report

— Claudia Webbe MP (@ClaudiaWebbe) April 19, 2024

But the BBC’s ‘journalism’ only goes so far. While Newsnight apologised for its ‘inaccuracy’, it did not bother to find out or report that Webbe’s supposed ‘victim’ was found by the court to have lied repeatedly – or that the Metropolitan Police withheld evidence that would have helped Webbe’s defence:

The BBC’s web page for Thursday’s programme now says it’s been ‘edited for legal reasons’:

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