Complaint
A viewer complained that a contribution from a Waltham Forest Councillor, in which he cited a review of a traffic reduction scheme in Walthamstow which was published by the Council in 2017, contained false information which was allowed to go unchallenged. The ECU considered the complaint in the light of the BBC’s editorial standards of accuracy.
Outcome
The ECU agreed that the Councillor’s statement that “55% said they would change nothing about the scheme†might not be a statistically valid interpretation of the review’s results (because the figure included those who offered no additional comment as well as those who said they would keep the scheme unchanged). However, viewers would have understood from the Councillor’s contribution that the review showed that opposition to the scheme, which had initially be strong, had (as the reporter put it) “melted away†over time. In the ECU’s judgement this was an accurate interpretation of the review, unaffected by the validity or otherwise of the Councillor’s presentation of the 55% figure.
Not upheld