After yesterday’s piece, in which I called out Andrew Marr for attributing an entirely incorrect quote to the PM on his Sunday morning show, two things have happened. Firstly, as Mr Steerpike reported, Andrew Marr replied on Twitter, saying it was an ‘honest mistake’ and ‘cock up not conspiracy’.
@laidmanr @spectator @millsswift oh yes it is: honest mistake – I was wrong – sorry. Cock up not conspiracy, but wrong on my part
— Andrew Marr (@AndrewMarr9) April 20, 2015
Secondly, the BBC press office have issued a statement. It explains that Marr wanted to question Cameron about the section of the Conservative manifesto that refers to hunting, shooting and fishing. I can understand why you might want to do that – although it’s interesting that he would deem hunting to be such a major issue when they didn’t talk about many other things, such as defence, foreign aid – or indeed foreign policy. It then admits that the piece they gave Andrew was one reporting on the Countryside Alliance piece – not the actual piece – and that:
‘The way the piece was written gave the impression that these were Mr Cameron’s own words. After returning to the original article, we accept that this reading was incorrect and that our error was an honest mistake’.
I have asked the BBC press office if they can confirm the origins of the quote, but for now the only place I can source it to is this piece in the Ipswich Star. Yes, the piece is a bit unclear about who said what – but surely that’s exactly why you would go to the original source and check – especially if said source is readily available online, and it would have been such a bizarre thing for Cameron to have said.
Perhaps it was an honest mistake, and they simply got a quote wrong. But how many of the Andrew Marr Show’s 2 million viewers will see the apology, compared to the number who will simply remember the original questions?
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