Amid a wave of BBC cutbacks, the Corporation has made much of its new ‘Verify’ service. Bosses have trumpeted its fact-checkers – staff, supposedly, with ‘forensic investigative skills’ – as a solution to the slew of misinformation in the age of social media. So it was somewhat sub-optimal then that the BBC was forced to fact check itself on Thursday night in an episode of the flagship show Question Time.
At one point in the evening, Zia Yusuf, the Reform party chairman, attacked the number of asylum seekers arriving into Britain after it emerged that the Foreign Office has spent more than £4 billion on support for refugees and asylum seekers. Yusuf rightly noted that the UK takes in more asylum seekers per capita than France before host Fiona Bruce intervened to declare ‘France takes more per capita, we are quite far down the list.’
Fast forward just a few minutes and Bruce was, er, forced to fact check her own fact check.
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