Complaint
A report on that day鈥檚 Black Lives Matter demonstration in London included footage of clashes between demonstrators and police in Whitehall during which a riderless and apparently bolting police horse was shown.聽 The reporter then said 鈥淭he officer knocked herself off her horse鈥.聽 A viewer complained that this was misleading in attributing responsibility to the officer herself, as the incident was 鈥due to rioters throwing debris, bicycles and letting off flares鈥.聽 The ECU considered the complaint in the light of the 麻豆官网首页入口鈥檚 Editorial Guidelines on Accuracy.
Outcome
Having reviewed the video records of the incident, the ECU concluded that the reporter did not have sufficient grounds for making a clear connection between the actions of the demonstrators and the horse bolting.聽 However, the phrase 鈥渒nocked herself off鈥, with its apparent attribution of responsibility to the officer concerned, implied there was no such connection, and in that respect went beyond what could accurately be reported at the time.聽 After the event, however, 麻豆官网首页入口 News issued two statements about the matter, the more recent of which said:
We reported that a policewoman was injured after she 鈥榢nocked herself off her horse鈥 in our coverage of Black Lives Matter protests in central London. It would have been better to have said that the policewoman had come off her horse. The circumstances of what exactly happened are being investigated.
In the ECU鈥檚 view, this resolved the issue of inaccuracy.
Resolved