Complaint
The programme included an interview with Kim Leadbeater MP about her Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill. A listener complained that the interviewer’s questions were poorly-informed and couched in inflammatory language. In particular, he objected to the suggestion that the Bill, if enacted, would involve the state in “killing people” and to the question, “Who would administer the final injection?”, which he took to imply that the decision to end someone’s life would not be for the individual concerned to take. The ECU considered the complaint in the light of the BBC’s editorial standards of accuracy.
Outcome
The ECU accepted that the suggestion of the involvement of the state in killing people (later rephrased by the interviewer as assisting “the suicide of people that might otherwise take longer to die”) rested on an interpretation of the Bill which was open to question. However, it noted that some MPs opposed to the Bill had expressed their criticisms of it in similar terms, and considered that listeners in general would have understood the interviewer to be representing the views of the Bill’s opponents rather than offering a forensic analysis of it. The ECU therefore saw no material inaccuracy in the interviewer’s suggestion. Nor did it see any inaccuracy in the question, “Who would administer the final injection?”, which simply reflected the fact that the person deciding to end their life might expect to be assisted, for example by the administration of a fatal dose of medicine by a third party.
Not upheld