In the ECU’s judgement, the steps taken to check the story before publication had been reasonable in the circumstances as they were known at the time.  However, the Forbes investigation, published eight months after the article appeared, raised serious doubts about Mr Lo’s financial claims, in the light of which BBC Sport removed the word “billionaire” from the article’s headline and a sentence which reported his net worth as $1.7bn from the body of the article (as well as initiating its own enquiry into Mr Lo’s claims, which has yet to reach a conclusion).  The ECU considered the changes to the article appropriate, but insufficient on their own to address the issue of editorial standards.  The guidelines on accuracy say “in online text content, any mistake that alters the editorial meaning should normally be corrected and we should be transparent about what was wrong”.  As grounds have emerged for believing the article’s original description of Mr Lo’s wealth may have inaccurate, and as the cuts made in early August clearly affect its editorial meaning, the ECU judged that the fact that it had been changed and the reason for the changes should have been made clear to readers.  The complaint was upheld in that respect.

Partly upheld