A BBC News presenter was forced to issue a grovelling apology today after she accused Nigel Farage of using ‘customary inflammatory language’.
Geeta Guru-Murthy made the comment after a clip of Mr Farage speaking at a Reform UK event in Dover was shown on BBC News, before later apologising and saying this ‘didn’t meet the BBC’s editorial standards on impartiality’.
Mr Farage, Reform’s honorary president, said he was quoting the Polish prime minister Donald Tusk when he said ‘aggressive young males’ were coming into Poland.
Live on air, Ms Guru-Murthy said: ‘Earlier today we heard live from Nigel Farage, speaking at that election event we just saw.
‘When we came away from his live speech, I used language to describe it which didn’t meet the BBC’s editorial standards on impartiality. I’d like to apologise to Mr Farage and viewers for this.’
In a post on X, formerly Twitter, Mr Farage tagged Ms Guru-Murthy – the sister of Channel 4 News host Krishnan Guru-Murthy and asked: ‘What happened to impartiality?’
Former Conservative, now Reform MP, Lee Anderson said the licence fee should be scrapped and called for the presenter to be sacked.
In response to this, Mr Anderson said: ‘Shocking stuff here from the BBC. Time to scrap the licence and sack the lot of ’em.
Mr Anderson had the Tory whip removed over his refusal to apologise for claiming ‘Islamists’ had control of London mayor Sadiq Khan.
Mr Farage has declined to stand as an MP but will be involved in campaigning.
Today’s row comes on the back of an independent review of the BBC which found its coverage of migration contained ‘risks to impartiality‘.
The independent report, ordered by the BBC board, revealed that its journalists were ‘anxious’ about tackling topics that ‘could appear hostile to migrants‘.
The report, which focused particularly on news and current affairs, was undertaken by policy specialist Madeleine Sumption, who spoke to more than 100 people inside and outside of the company.
It concluded that while the corporation provides ‘a lot of excellent content on migration’ there are ‘risks to impartiality that point in multiple directions’, despite there being ‘no consistent bias towards one point of view’.
External experts were interviewed for the review and while some argued that coverage implicitly promoted a pro-government agenda on migration, others argued it had a consistent liberal bias.
Ms Sumption said she did not try to add up these criticisms to identify which way coverage may lean as this ‘might miss the point’.
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