The Media Show, Radio 4, 26 November 2026 The Reith Lectures, Radio 4, 25 November

Complaint

An item in this programme referred to an edit in the Reith Lecture broadcast on 25 November to which the lecturer had voiced an objection.  The presenter said “One line ... was removed for legal reasons.  Also for legal reasons, we’re not able to tell you what that line is”.  A listener complained that this conveyed a misleading impression that the law forbade the broadcast of the excised material.  He also complained that the transcript of the lecture published by the BBC was inaccurate because it did not provide a complete record of what the lecturer had said.  The ECU considered the complaint in the light of the BBC’s editorial standards of accuracy.


Outcome

To say that an edit has been made “for legal reasons” suggests only that the decision was made as a result of legal considerations, not that broadcasting the material would certainly have been illegal, and the ECU saw no basis for thinking listeners would have been misled.  The transcript of the 25 November lecture was intended as a record of what was broadcast, and was duly accurate as such.

Not upheld