BBC corrects Israel vaccination numbers after CAMERA UK complaint

Last month we noted that listeners to an edition of BBC Radio 4’s ‘World at One’ had been given an inaccurate portrayal of the number of people vaccinated in Israel:

BBC’S ‘WORLD AT ONE’ INACCURATE ON ISRAEL VACCINATION NUMBERS

“It’s vaccinated 5 million of its population of 9 million with the Pfizer jab. A million of those people have had two doses.”

As noted at the time, the presentation of those inaccurate figures – both in terms of absolute numbers and the proportion of fully vaccinated people – misled listeners with regard to the vaccination levels necessary to bring about the trends and outcomes discussed in the rest of the otherwise reasonable report.

CAMERA UK submitted a complaint on that issue showing that as of the date of broadcast 3,540,851 people had received the first dose of the vaccination and 2,156,997 of those had received the second dose.

Eight days later we received a response informing us that it would take more time to resolve that straightforward issue. On March 4th – twenty-four days after the complaint was submitted – we received the following reply:

“Thank you for contacting us about The World At One on 8 February.

The figures given out on the programme were incorrect due to a mistake made when comparing doses given to the total number people vaccinated, and we apologise for the error on this occasion. We have spoken to the programme team and presenter about this inaccuracy.

We have published a correction on the following page, explaining the above: https://www.bbc.co.uk/helpandfeedback/corrections_clarifications/

That correction – dated March 1st – reads as follows:

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2 Comments

  1. says: Grimey

    The BBC has “spoken to the programme team …………..about this inaccuracy” and told them “Keep it up, Guys, find more lies to report and don’t worry if you get it wrong, the corrections won’t come until three weeks later”.

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