The BBC has vowed to expand its controversial ‘Verify’ fact-checking unit – despite being mired in recent accusations of political bias. Director General Tim Davie wants to “build Verify across more services globally” and to give it a greater role in local UK reporting as part of a mission to “nurture trust”.
The unit, launched by BBC News CEO Deborah Turness in 2023, has been one regularly debated over among media commentators after being accused of making its own factual errors and promoting flawed journalism. Danny Cohen, a former BBC director of television, accused Verify of anti-Israel bias in its Gaza coverage – calling it “a major contributor to the damage being done to the BBC’s reputation and its commitments to impartiality and accuracy”.
It also emerged that Verify used a Labour Party activist to back its analysis of government figures on the farm tax.
BBC Verify was similarly slammed when it suggested that private school fee increases after the Government’s VAT raid will not affect parents’ choices around education.
The unit suggested on Radio 4’s Today programme that fee increases over the past two decades had not made any significant difference to parental decisions on whether to send their children to private or state schools.
But the Independent Schools Council disputed this, saying that parents were already leaving independent schools in great numbers.
Now Mr Davie has publicly backed the Verify team, stressing it has an important part to play in the BBC being “the world’s most trusted news provider”.
Making the expansion announcement in a speech to staff entitled ‘A Catalyst for Building Trust’, in Salford, he stressed his opposition to the BBC becoming a Netflix-style subscription service.
“Universal payment is not over,” he said, looking to the future of the licence fee. “The current licence fee works and is delivering the content you see.
“I think it is a very good system but we are saying that, based on changes in audience behaviour and huge changes in the world, the system should be reformed and should be modernised.
“What we want is a way in which everyone pays for the BBC fairly, and that is what we’re hunting for.”
Mr Davie said he wants to “supercharge” the World Service and more than double its audience to one billion people a week.
But to do this he said he needs more funding with the scale of his World Service plans require “a few hundred million more than where we are today”.
Other plans include a streaming device which can be plugged into a television to deliver the Freely service – which is backed by the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 – over broadband, aimed at older people who do not have smart TVs and risk being left behind in digital switchover.
Meanwhile, in a question and answer session after his speech, Mr Davie was asked by one of his reporters if Gary Lineker had broken guidelines earlier this week when sharing a video by campaign group Palestine Lobby, which featured an “anti-Semitic” rat emoji.
A terse Mr Davie replied: “I’d just say the BBC’s reputation is held by everyone and when someone makes a mistake it costs us.
“We absolutely need people to be exemplars of BBC values and follow our social media policy, simple as that.”
A spokesman for Lineker said the Match of the Day presenter had not noticed the emoji when he reposted the clip on Instagram, but had deleted it after learning of its symbolic meaning.
The presenter said in a later statement: “It was an error on my part for which I apologise unreservedly.”