Complaint
An item in this bulletin included a reference to Joel Bishop, who had been sentenced to 18 months’ imprisonment for his participation in the disturbance in Hartlepool following the Southport killings. A viewer complained that the BBC’s Home Affairs Correspondent had incorrectly suggested that Mr Bishop was a racist, whereas the prosecution at his trial had accepted that his words during the disturbance had been insults directed against the police rather than racist remarks. The ECU considered the complaint in the light of the BBC’s editorial standards of accuracy.
Outcome
The Home Affairs Correspondent said of Mr Bishop: “He joined the army at 18 and had an exemplary military record, and then in in a moment of madness he gets seized by this mob mentality, and now he will be branded a racist for the rest of his life and he's got 18 months in prison to think about it”. In the ECU’s judgement, this was an observation on the consequences of Mr Bishop’s participation in a disturbance in which racist elements were to the fore, not a suggestion that he had been found guilty of racism.
Not upheld