Liam Stokes

Is factual accuracy too much to ask from BBC presenters like Chris Packham?

On Sunday evening, the BBC presenter Chris Packham took to social media to tell the world that they should support his anti-shooting campaign because declining populations of lapwings are ‘still being shot’. Unfortunately for him, this is utter tosh. No one is shooting lapwings, as Packham acknowledged five hours later in an apology on Twitter. 12 hours after that, a similar retraction appeared on his Facebook page. Yet even now, almost 48 hours on, neither of the original posts have been deleted.

This fixation with the passing of mere hours may sound petty, but in the context of social media 48 hours is a lifetime. Packham has 48,608 followers on Facebook and 175,000 followers on Twitter, all of whom have had 48 hours to see these posts and react. And a reaction is exactly what these posts are designed to elicit; in a classic case of modern animal rights campaigning, they blend celebrity social media presence with a false accusation and a link to a parliamentary petition seeking to ban something.

On this occasion Packham is attempting to remove UK waders from the list of species it is legal to shoot in the UK. Thus far he has included in his campaign images of American woodcock (not a UK wader) and allegations concerning lapwings (not legal to shoot in the UK). More egregiously his campaign ignores the fact that the shooting community is at the forefront of both funding wader-conservation research and creating wader habitat, as decisively argued by the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust. Perhaps it is not surprising that this particular campaign is faltering.

Maybe that’s why, despite issuing apologies and clarifications, the fallacious lapwing posts remain. They have worked and they continue to work. Long after Packham’s admissions that these posts were misleading, people have continued to respond to them, broadcasting their outrage and the fact they have ‘signed and shared’ the petition as a result of what they have been led to believe.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Keep reading with a free trial

Subscribe and get your first month of online and app access for free. After that it’s just £1 a week.

There’s no commitment, you can cancel any time.

Or

Unlock more articles

REGISTER

Comments

Don't miss out

Join the conversation with other Spectator readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in