Dogs bark, cows moo and the BBC makes a hash of it. After holding out for a week, the Corporation has today thrown in the towel and issued a belated and grovelling apology to Nigel Farage for misreporting the reason his bank account at Coutts was closed. The Beeb’s original report by its Business Editor Simon Jack claimed that the reason for the closure was that Farage’s account had fallen beneath the bank’s wealth limit.
But following last week’s revelation that Farage’s account was shut because he was not ‘compatible with Coutts… as an inclusive organisation’, the BBC has been left with a substantial amount of egg on its face once again.
On their Corrections and Clarifications website, the Beeb now says that ‘we acknowledge that the information we reported … turned out not to be accurate and have apologised to Mr Farage.’ Jack has also tweeted that:
The information on which we based our reporting on Nigel Farage and his bank accounts came from a trusted and senior source. However the information turned out to be incomplete and inaccurate. Therefore I would like to apologise to Mr Farage.
Farage himself has posted his own gloating video on Twitter to mark Jack’s apology and reveal that Deborah Turness, the BBC News Chief Executive, has also said sorry to the staunch Brexiteer:
Well, well, well. The BBC’s Business Editor Simon Jack has fully apologised to me publicly and I thank him for that. It’s not often that the BBC apologise. I’ve also got a letter I’ve just received from Deborah Turness at the BBC and I’m going to absorb it and talk more about that at 7 o’clock tonight on GB News. But for the BBC to apologise, I’m very, very pleased. Jack says in the tweet that his information came from a trusted and senior source. I would suggest it may well have been a very senior source.
That is, of course, a reference to Alison Rose, the NatWest boss who is accused of being a potential source for the BBC story. The Beeb’s apology comes after City Minister Andrew Griffith summoned nineteen bank chiefs to give assurances that customers ‘can access payment accounts without fear of being de-banked for their lawful expression.’
And with Farage’s lawyers demanding that the Information Commissioner investigate the disclosure of his banking details, you can be sure that you haven’t heard the last of this matter…
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