BBC responds to Scottish Government complaint over Hate Crime Act coverage

The act, which was passed with support from all Holyrood parties bar the Tories in 2021, came into effect on April 1 and sparked a media storm.

Amid the controversy, the BBC falsely reported on April 2 and April 3 that it had been made a criminal offence in Scotland to make “derogatory comments” based on the protected characteristics of age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, transgender identity or being intersex.

In late April, the BBC issued an apology and a retraction on the corrections and clarifications page of its website, saying it had “reminded our teams of the importance of accuracy in our output”.

However, the Scottish Government raised concerns that the short paragraph on the BBC’s website was not adequate to correct the errors in coverage on Radio Scotland.

The executive complaints unit responded to the complaint on June 20.

Summarising the issue, it said: “A representative of the Scottish Government complained that, on two occasions, the presenter had mischaracterised the act as criminalising derogatory comments based on the characteristics of the groups to which it provided protection, and that the inaccuracy should have been acknowledged and corrected on air, rather than by a posting on the BBC complaints website.

“The ECU considered the complaint in the light of the BBC’s editorial standards relating to accuracy and correcting errors.”

READ MORE: What is – and isn’t – in Scotland’s new Hate Crime Act?

In its ruling, the complaints unit “accepted that the presenter’s characterisation of the Act did not meet the BBC’s standards of due accuracy”.

However, it claimed that because an expert had appeared on Radio Scotland and “correctly set out the formal criteria required for an offence to have been committed under the act”, the misreporting was more justified.

As such, the complaints unit ruled that the BBC would not have to broadcast a correction for its mistakes.

It said: “[The reporting] went on to focus as much on the problem the act sought to address and where theoretically the line should be drawn on what is and is not acceptable as it did on the exact wording of the legislation.

“It would have been clear to listeners therefore that there was a dispute over whether the mere act of speaking derogatory words about a protected group would be sufficient for the police to invoke the new legislation.

“In those circumstances, and whilst it was certainly appropriate to acknowledge and correct on the public record the inaccuracy which had been broadcast, I do not think it likely to have misled listeners to an extent which would require a broadcast correction.”