Richard Tice, leader of the Reform party, told The Telegraph that the mistake «should not have happened in the first place» Photo: Henry Nicholls/AFP
The BBC has apologized to Reform UK for calling it «far-right» in a news report.
The corporation made the announcement while reporting on the Liberal spring. Democrats. conference at which he mentioned that Reform was ahead of Sir Ed Davey's party in opinion polls.
Although Reform is to the right of the Conservative Party on issues including legal and illegal immigration and the tax burden, it has previously stated that its political goals are not motivated by political ideology.
The BBC said in a statement on Monday: «In an article about the Lib Dem spring conference, we incorrectly described the Reform UK political party as being far right when it came to opinion polls.»
«This sentence was subsequently removed from the article , as it does not meet our usual editorial standards. Although the original wording was based on a news agency copy, we take full responsibility and apologize for the error.»
Richard Theis, leader of the Reform party, told The Telegraph that while he was glad that the BBC has apologized, the error «should not have happened at all».
“This is a tactic that some news organizations are going to use, which is to smear and stigmatize not only the party, but also directly affect me and other senior figures,” he said.
He claimed the BBC was «scared by how successful we are becoming» and accused it of acting in its own «selfish interests».< /p>< p>“They should be under no illusion that while you cannot defame a political party, there is a direct link to its leader and you can defame me and I will not tolerate it,” he said. “To anyone who wants to try this, good luck — and I look forward to seeing you in court.”
In a separate statement, Mr. Tice said his lawyers had also been in contact “with other organizations that repeated the BBC line.» He said he viewed the claim that Reform was a «far-right» political party as «slanderous and slanderous.»
The reform promised to scrap the BBC license fee, which is currently £159 a year but will increase by £10.50 in April, an increase of 6.6 per cent.
The election manifesto launched by Reform at its spring conference last month said: “The out-of-touch, wasteful BBC is institutionally biased. A TV license is taxation without representation. In the world of on-demand television, people should have freedom of choice.»
Mr Tice, a presenter at GB News, has regularly criticized the BBC and claimed it is «biased» against the figures from True, calling for the presenter to be dropped political program Newsnight.
In the Westminster voting intention poll, Reform is currently up to 14 per cent ahead of the general election, often trailing the Conservatives by single figures. Around one in four Tory voters plan to support him in 2019.
Last week the party gained its first MP after the defection of Lee Anderson, the former deputy chairman of the Conservative Party.
The BBC came under attack from the Tories in December for calling a political festival organized by Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and attended by Rishi Sunak a “far-right rally.”
The event was attended by centrists and centrists. Left-wing figures, as well as a wide range of right-wing politicians. A Conservative spokesman said the editorial decision raised «serious questions» about the BBC's policy and accused it of «sloppy categorisation».
On Tuesday the PA news agency published an updated version of one of its stories from the newspaper . Liberal Democrat conference, excluding reference to reform as “far right”.
Свежие комментарии