The Media & Their Narratives.

[BIAD]

Have you ever caught yourself about announce a scathing untrue comment about someone or
something and then realise you're just being a petty juvenile with a grudge? Well, don't bother
applying for a job at BBC Verify.

BBC forced to withdraw ‘thoroughly wrong’ racism allegations

'The BBC’s flagship fact-checking unit wrongly suggested that car insurance companies were
racist and was forced to take the story down, according to a leaked whistleblowing report.

Journalists at the BBC Verify service wrote about an “ethnic penalty” in car insurance in a story
that was “thoroughly wrong”, according to the memo by Michael Prescott, who until June 2025
was an independent adviser to the BBC’s Editorial Guidelines and Standards Board.

Mr Prescott’s memo says the BBC “fell too easily for putting out ill-researched material that
suggested issues of racism where there were none”. BBC Verify, which was started to combat
disinformation, reported in February 2024 that car insurance quotes were higher in areas with
large ethnic minority populations, even if road accident and crime levels were similar to other
places.

The story featured on BBC Breakfast, the One and Six O’ Clock News, Radio 1 Newsbeat,
Radio 5 Live and the BBC’s TikTok channel. Mr Prescott found the story “so unlikely” that
he asked for an internal review of it, which found “multiple serious editorial problems” with
the reporting.



In the memo, Mr Prescott writes: “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.” The Association of British Insurers had
issued a statement which provided “important context”, but it was only quoted selectively.

When these problems were raised with BBC executives, the reference to the “ethnic penalty” was
removed, but the report was “so thoroughly wrong that later, a stricter view was taken and the entire
report was taken down”. The data on which the report was based did not take into account other
factors that influence insurance prices, such as whether a particular area has an unusually high
claims history or a large number of people who drive without insurance.
The figures were also at least five years out of date.



In September 2024, the article was replaced with a statement which read: “BBC News has removed
an article from our website about car insurance premiums as it did not meet our normal editorial
standards.” It took six months for the BBC to remove a story “that was not fit for purpose and spread
damaging misinformation”, Mr Prescott says in the memo. No one was disciplined over it, he writes,
and he asks: “Where was the professional scepticism and what checks were made prior to publication
and broadcast? “How could this piece go out unchallenged across so many BBC outlets and what
does this say about BBC professionalism and governance?”

The revelation will probably prove to be embarrassing for Deborah Turness, chief executive of BBC
News, for whom Verify is a flagship project. She has described the service as “transparency in action
– fact-checking, verifying video, countering disinformation, analysing data and explaining complex
stories in the pursuit of truth”.

Announcing the launch of BBC Verify in May 2023, she said: “This is our promise to consumers
– we understand that their trust must be earned and we will show them how we are doing that
each and every day.” Another story about “structural racism” in the workplace also fell apart under
scrutiny because reporters had “accepted without question” a report by the politically motivated
Trades Union Congress, according to the memo.
The BBC said it does not comment on leaks...'

Archived Telegraph Article: