The Afterword

Musings on the byways of popular culture

Menu

Navigation

You are here: Home / Forum / Monumental eff-up on Newsnight

Monumental eff-up on Newsnight

by 113 Comments

Well, somebody’s for the chop, I’d imagine.

Emily Maitlis just wrapped up this evening’s edition of Newsnight by reminding us that on November 20, 1937, Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip were married at Westminster Abbey.

Ah, I thought, said read that out wrong, she meant to say 1947.

But no – she ploughed on, informing us that at the time, Britain’s relationship with Europe was about to change dramatically and Spain was in the midst of terrible domestic upheaval. [Oblique references to the imminent Second World War and the ongoing Spanish Civil War]. She also remarked how on that day in 1937 [yes, she said it again], the skies were grey, just like they were today.

“Well,” said Maitlis, manfully continuing with the script [I wonder whether by now she was beginning to get a little shiver and thinking “What? Can this be right?”], “seventy years on, very little changes. Goodnight.” [Smile]

I’m a big fan of the BBC, but how can such a terrible fuck-up be made on such an occasion? I’m presuming heads will roll. I hope the Queen wasn’t watching. [“Philip! Was I really only eleven when we got hitched?”].

1

Comments

  1. Just realised – even worse – I wasn’t watching the original BBC2 airing, it was the later repeat on the BBC News channel. And still nobody picked it up.

    Fake news.

  2. “A few years later in 1939, Neville Chamberlain arrived back from Buenos Aries to announce the birth of the Royal couple’s first child Prince George. But tragedy was soon to strike when the Queen Mother, Lady Jane Grey, was killed in a Paris underpass by a lone assassin, Gavrilo Princip, triggering the Hundred Years War…….”

    The BBC. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts.

  6. BBC’s Norman Smith did a quite awful piece to camera in Downing Street yesterday, about the latest Br*x*t shenanigans; news as an unfunny ‘comedy’ routine, gurning to camera. Chris Morris must be turning in his grave.

    There’s something wrong at the heart of their news programmes.

    • The problem with Newsnight is that until recently it was edited by some ex-Grauniad guy who no doubt stuffed the place with barely-literate unpaid interns.

      I can’t stick Norman Smith. On the radio in particular he uses a very silly clipped tone that I suppose he thinks makes him sound terribly authoritative. It actually makes him sound like someone from a Berlitz learn-yourself-English cassette.

      And why are these people always trying to be funny? Where have all the grownups gone?

  7. Newsnight and the Royals – two things to which a large majority of people rarely give a passing thought. Little wonder his is the only place I have seen any mention of a gaffe last night.

  8. Bugger – I’d just switched off before the end!

    If it had been on W1A we’d have laughed and said that would never ‘appen. Where’s the Head of Values when you need him?

    I expect the Queen was tucked up with Phil having some anniversary rumpy pumpy, so no harm done, eh?

    You’ve all got images now…

  9. Rather cringeworthy when a flagship news programme makes a gaffe both in maths and their understanding of modern history. I would be deeply embarrassed.

    From a TV show that no one watches to a rag that no one reads.The Lonious Monk was wonderful. The sub editor was quite understandably mixing up the brilliant jazz pianist and the scourge of the Romanovs: Rasputin. He was The Looniest Monk.

  11. I am offended by it, both for the lack of historical knowledge and the inability to do basic arithmetic.
    We’re not dealing with obscure information.
    1936 was the abdication crisis – a major event in British history. If you know anything about it you would recall that King George VI only had young children at that time and so the then Princess Elizabeth would have been far too young to get married. Wouldn’t you ask where is the wartime footage of the the young princess visiting bombed out areas (as the King & Queen did)? Are they wholly unaware of of the famous radio broadcast to the Children Of the Empire? Did no-one stop and think that if she got married in 1937 she would therefore be about 100 now and Prince Phillip would have reached his centenary. And where were the celebrations for that?
    It is lazy, lazy journalism and I’m appalled by it.
    Also didn’t Emily Maitlis, (a Cambridge graduate I believe) not have the nous to realise the error and ad lib a correct version instead of slavishly following the autocue?

  14. A quick Google suggests it’s The Afterword and The Daily Mail getting most cross about this. As much as I try, I find it difficult to feel anything other than a little sympathy for the person who made the mistake.

      • It’s mere conjecture that it is an unpaid intern. But whether it is or not, whoever wrote the original copy will have passed it on to a sub-editor, or whatever the TV news equivalent is, to be checked and it was not picked up.
        Yes there have been worse mistakes, but this is indicative of a lack of basic care and an ignorance that can lead to far worse mistakes being made. Like not checking sources when accusations of paedophilia are made.

        • Cheers, Carl. That’s the point I’m making. As someone who had a 40-year career in journalism, the last 17 in real-time news, I find it unbelievable that our flagship national broadcaster can get something like this so horrendously wrong. It’s about the standard of checks and balances. Basic stuff, really.

          As for you nay-sayers – well, “no-one died”, but surely you’d like accurate information from your prime media outlets? How can this not bother you?

          I recently began to read a history book which referred to the Greenwich Meridian as the line of zero degrees latitude, which made me immediately stop reading the book and chuck it in the bin. How can a serious book with a professional author and, presumably, professional editors and reputable publishers, make such an error?

          I read reviews on Amazon and most reviewers loved the book and didn’t notice the error. One guy highlighted the fuck-up and was bombarded by people saying, Lighten up, mate, it’s an easy mistake to make.

          Okay, why fucking bother with facts?

  15. I’m going to float a theory here.

    Perhaps Emily Maitlis knew full well that the date was wrong. Perhaps as she saw it roll across the autocue she sighed inwardly, realising that her department’s unpaid teenage intern had dropped a bit of a clanger.

    And then, maybe – just maybe – she had another thought. Maybe she wondered what in the name of holy living fuck she, a capable, well educated woman who speaks five languages, was doing on the BBC at so late an hour in the evening, spouting inanities about the marriage that sits atop the reeking mountain of bullshit that is the monarchy, at a time when so much of the world is embroiled in legitimate turmoil.

    Perhaps she used that moment of clarity to reflect on her life, what had lead her to this point, where she might yet go to next, and simply decided to leave the incorrect fact be, on the basis that – of all the things she’s probably ever reported in her entire career – the wedding date of the Queen and Prince Philip is probably the least significant.

    Perhaps that’s what happened. Perhaps she simply lacked the heart to bother taking corrective action, and recognised that the error, in and of itself, would provide the nation with greater gaiety than yet more witless forelock tugging.

    Here’s what still remains the greatest BBC news show cock up of our generation. It’s positively life affirming.

  16. People do have a problem with how long ago events were, especially when the maths straddles the two centuries.
    1987 will be described as 20 years ago, the 50s fifty years ago etc. etc.

    In studying newspapers between the wars and (especially) popular culture of the 50s and 60s, I come across these inaccuracies all the time.
    I’m actually more surprised when the maths adds up.

  17. I’ve been a journalist for about 25 years, with a decent chunk of time at the BBC.

    Let me try to explain why passing this off as a mildly funny, easily dismissed mistake, possibly by an unpaid intern, is to let a lot of people off the hook.

    At the initial editorial meeting to discuss that night’s lineup, there would have been a free-for-all discussion, where ideas about how to cover the top news stories of the day would be tossed around. One of those stories would have been Liz and Phil’s anniversary.

    Perhaps that would have been rejected as not very important, before someone – could have been a junior staffer, could have been the editor – probably suggested covering it in a more intelligent, ‘Newsnight-y’ way.

    “Why don’t we compare Britain of 70 years ago with Britain today? We can do a nice little sequence at the end of the programme, highlighting some differences, but perhaps some parallels too. What about trying to draw some comparisons with what’s happening in Europe now with what was happening then?”

    That would have been discussed further, with some consensus of what to focus on in terms of content – such as Spain – before the editor decided whether to proceed with the item or not.

    I don’t know how many editorial staff are involved in making each edition of Newsnight, but I’d estimate around 8. It is extraordinary that during the editorial meeting none of them said “Hang on a minute – we’re barking up the wrong tree here. We should be talking about 1947, not 1937.” It points to a basic ignorance and sloppiness.

    But let’s move on.

    During the editorial meeting, the Liz and Phil sequence would have been assigned to a producer (or, in BBC-speak, a broadcast journalist). That person would almost certainly have a number of years of experience – interns are rare at the BBC, and most staff end up at programmes like Newsnight after having spent some years elsewhere in news and current affairs.

    Putting that sequence together over a number of hours would involve identifying suitable visuals, pulling together some research and then writing the script. Again, it beggars belief that this person didn’t realise at some point that the item was fundamentally flawed.

    Anyway, let’s continue.

    Well before transmission time, the producer would have indicated in the running order that everyone has access to that the script was complete and ready for final checking. The senior editor on deck would have looked at it, tidied it up and indicated it was good to go. It is almost certain that Emily Maitlis would have looked at it at this point – presenters like to tweak scripts to suit their own style. If she did change it, the senior editor would have had another, final check.

    So, here was another moment when alarm bells could and should have started ringing in the mind of at least one person. It is jaw-dropping to me that they didn’t.

    So let’s recap: About eight people would have discussed how to prepare this item, one person would have had a number of hours to put it together and at least two people would have done final checks before it went to air.

    That none of them was able to identify the problem suggests a number of things: Ignorance, laziness, sloppiness. These are qualities which would be totally unacceptable at a tiny local radio station, let alone the BBC’s flagship current affairs programme.

    Accuracy is EVERYTHING in journalism. It is the foundation on which everything else in the industry lies. While this news item was relatively insignificant, heads should roll. At the very least, someone deserves a monumental bollocking.

  18. Thanks for giving us that behind-the-scenes insight into how an item finally arrives on the screen, DavidB. Very illuminating.

    I enjoyed reading Bingo’s elegant theory too. You spin a fine yarn, Mr. L, but I don’t believe a word if it.

  19. Can I also add that this entire farrago pales into comparison beside the time Newsnight accused Sir Ted Heath of being the Unabomber. Another occasion where a laxly supervised intern caused chaos at the Beeb.

  21. I’ll add my name to those who care. I don’t particularly care for the royal family, and certainly not as a news story, but as others have highlighted this wasn’t a momentary slip-up by a presenter – in which case it really would be a total non-issue – or something like Amanda Holden assuming that British astronaut had been to the moon on some crappy daytime TV sofa show, this was a prepared, scripted piece on a supposedly serious news/current affairs programme. It matters because it raises questions about basic competence among that programme’s staff. Aside from everything David B has detailed in the editorial process, at some point the archive researcher will have been requesting 1947 wedding clips and 1937 news clips – and presumably not wondering why these were going together into a package.

    Bob – you’re in the teaching game. If you open a text book and its full of stupid inaccuracies, do you not instinctively think ‘I wonder are all the other books from that writer/publisher full of crap too?’ [Okay, I know it’s probably all done on clouds and gadgets these days but go with me on the principle…]

    Certainly, as someone who’s worked in print journalism in the past and off and on in professional level non-fiction books, I know that on any occasions – thankfully, few – when I’ve had a brain fade and something inaccurate has got past my own proofing and that of others and made it into print, I’ve been mortified – (a) feeling like a chump, but also (b) distinctly aware that one silly mistake can leave readers thinking ‘this guy knows nothing – what else must be wrong?’

    If a whole squad of people on a BBC current affairs show where accuracy – especially given its history in recent years – should be paramount get something like this wrong, passing through any number of individuals’ sight and, it can’t help but cause one to think that the programme simply cannot automatically be trusted. The ‘Whoops!’ pseudo-apology on Facebook was a wrong call. The editor should have posted a more serious apology, in my view, and given assurances that lessons had been learned etc.

    • Of course. But this was a link, not a news story, and shit happens. If it had been a piece of reporting, I’d feel differently, but my understanding is that it was the pre-credits “and on the night that blah blah blah, it’s goodnight from us” bit. Some mistakes matter. Some don’t. Shit happens.

      Newspapers make stuff up out of whole cloth, constantly, and correct it in a tiny box on page 17 if someone reports them to IPSO. I don’t remember the same level of thumbs-in-lapels sententious head-shaking about stuff like that. Facts are important, but sometimes shit just happens. The BBC is hardly blameless, but compared to Nigel Lawson being given equal time on Today as a voice on climate change, or that Wetherspoons bloke coming on the same programme to lie unchallenged the other day, this feels like a silly mistake which is easily corrected and I’m a bit open-mouthed at how nuclear people are going about it. It was a link, a piece of presentation, not a 10-minute story package.

      • Well, you certainly have a point about Lawson (don’t know about the Wetherspoon thing – what was it about?)… Over here in NI, the local BBC makes entire series about ‘Ulster-Scots’ culture and language (!), presumably because of that bogus ‘balance’ stuff that allows climate change deniers and borderline hate presearchers airtime. The Ulster-Scots thing is entirely fictional – a spurious construct of the DUP’s to create a culture/language as a counterbalance to Irish language and Irish music, and get a ton of funding from Stormont (if the b*****ds – the lot of them – can ever be bothered to sit again).

      • I believe you’re wrong, Bob. You just don’t seem to get it. I worked as a journalist for 40 years and I know DavidB has it bang on. Accuracy is everything – one of the absolute foundation stones, along with impartiality.

        It wasn’t a link, it was a comment on a newsworthy “event” of the day, the seventieth wedding anniversary of the British monarch, which is important to many people [not me particularly]. To be honest, it doesn’t matter whether it was a link or a news story, it was one-minute coda at the end of a serious news programme, and it “informed” people that the Queen was married in 1937, in the middle of the Spanish Civil War, when she was in fact eleven. And the fact no-one noticed the error before it was committed to air is HUGELY worrying, not to mention that it was then REPEATED half an hour later. Something very wrong with the BBC’s editorial process. Perhaps a one-off, perhaps not.

        I find your “who cares?” comments odd in the extreme. I am, indeed, disappoint.

        • Again, I can only apologise for disappointing you, Madfox. I was really looking forward to getting a decent night’s sleep tonight, but I suppose some things just aren’t meant to be.

        • Just so I’m not in danger of being left out of a good harangue: I don’t care either.

          I think you’re coming at this from a professional perspective, rather than as a consumer. If this was my balls up, I’d be positively mortified, and of course it would be a very grave and serious matter.

          As a mere viewer, however, I’m positively glad it happened. They’ll presumably correct it in due course, no one will be in any danger of getting any vital royal dates wrong and in the mean-time it sort of adds to the gaiety of nations (not least via this very thread).

          Would it bother me if the BBC were suddenly riddled with similar errors? Yeah, of course. But that’s not what we’re discussing here. It’s basically a single (albeit multi faceted) balls up, and we have no idea what went wrong behind the scenes, beyond some semi educated internet guesswork (ever reliable).

          Again, as a consumer, I don’t recognise this matter as being HUGELY worrying. Or even worrying at all for that matter. Jesus, I wish I had the bandwidth for this to be a major worry.

          I can put myself in your shoes and see why this incident puts your teeth on edge, coming from the background you do. Maybe put yourself in Bob’s brogues and ask yourself if you can’t do the same?

          • I don’t care. It was a crappy piece of fluff about the Queen and they tried to make it look smart by adding some history. Someone got the date wrong, thereafter the history was out of whack (which was a shame because of the Brexit and Spain things gave a sense correlation to the present day).

            I’m glad it wasn’t an important mistake.

              • If it was a competition in caring the least, I think DisappointingBob would win – he simply doesn’t care enough to EVEN tell us how much he doesn’t care about this! He is not only past caring, he is past NOT caring. Really, he should be putting all his energy into a coining a new word to describe this quantum world far beyond our current understanding of what it is to ‘not care’ – but he JUST DOESN’T CARE enough to do that.

  22. I care.
    We are all told over and over and over again not to forget the war and these people can’t get a major … and, whatever you think of the royals, that’s what it is … event the right side of the bloody war!

  24. Look if nothing else I think we can agree that this thread is absolute sexual catnip. I think the world “merely” may have been used. Grammar has been corrected. All we need now is a sighting of “tantamount” and the place will be a grunting sea of damp flesh.

  27. I missed this thread a few days ago and only caught up now, and I’ve read the whole thing in open mouthed shock. Got a little bit testy there, didn’t it?

    On balance, after reading davidb’s wonderful summing up, I think I DO care. But what is amazing is how much people care about making it clear whether they care or don’t care. Including me, I suppose! Out of such twisted principles are flame wars born!

  28. I care about the principle, but not about the incident.

    Mistakes happen. I work in software where large teams of people try and ensure mistakes are never made. We sometimes still make them, and we try to learn what went wrong and how to avoid repeating the mistake. I assume a similar review has happened at the BBC, but as others have said this incident is really not important. Failing to learn from it would be.

  30. I’m a bit late to this one as well – brings to mind the story of a lowly janitor at NASA telling JFK he was “helping to get men to the moon!”. We’re supposed to be inspired by the Janitor’s attitude – but the story starts “In 1969 President Kennedy visited NASA and…”.

    Do you see the problem here? Are you going to accept what follows as credible? Reader, I had to sit through a session facilitated by workplace culture consultants to discuss this story and the consensus was that the date didn’t matter and I was being a touch pedantic. I agreed eventually to accept that Zombie JFK staggered around NASA interrogating janitors, six years after his head was blown to pieces. Still rankles.

Leave a Reply