Executive Complaints Unit

The BBC's second-stage body for editorial standards complaints

Executive Complaints Unit
Type	Unit of the British Broadcasting Corporation
Services	Second-stage investigation of editorial complaints
Website	BBC complaints: ECU findings

The Executive Complaints Unit (ECU) is the BBC's second-stage body for complaints about editorial standards. It is part of the BBC but, in the BBC's description, is "tasked with considering complaints impartially and independently of the interests of the programme makers/content providers" and with judging them against the BBC's Editorial Guidelines. In January 2022, on the instruction of the Director-General, Tim Davie, it investigated complaints about the BBC's reporting of the Oxford Street Chanukah bus incident and partly upheld them.

Role

Under the BBC's complaints framework, an editorial complaint that is not resolved at the first stage may be taken to the ECU. The unit "will investigate your complaint and aim to reply within 20 working days". If it finds a breach of editorial standards it will uphold the complaint in whole or in part; if it believes that enough had already been done to address the breach, it may find that the complaint has been resolved. "The ECU's finding will normally be the BBC's final response to your complaint." The Director-General, "as the BBC's editor-in-chief, has the discretion to overrule the ECU's findings or suspend its investigations"; in those "exceptional cases… it will be the Director-General's position which constitutes the BBC's final view on the complaint for the purpose of escalation to Ofcom".

A separate published procedure allows the Director-General, as editor-in-chief, to "fast-track" an editorial complaint. "The Executive Complaints Unit (ECU) will take on the primary investigating role on most occasions, but in some cases outside support may be sought in order to ensure a speedy resolution."

Oxford Street finding

On 2 December 2021 BBC News Online and BBC London News reported an incident in Oxford Street in which men were filmed spitting at and abusing Jewish passengers on a bus. The original online article said: "Some racial slurs about Muslims can also be heard from inside the bus." The wording was later changed to "a slur about Muslims". The BBC received complaints and representations from "a significant number of groups and individuals, including the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Chief Rabbi". The ECU recorded that "the Director-General in his role as Editor-in Chief instructed the BBC's Executive Complaints Unit to investigate the complaints as a matter of urgency."

In a finding dated 26 January 2022 the ECU did not accept that the coverage had "victim-sham[ed]" the passengers or created a "false equivalence". It found, however, that the original wording ("some racial slurs") "did not meet the BBC's standards of due accuracy". It regarded the correction of the online article as resolving that point, but upheld the corresponding complaint about the television report, which had not been corrected. On whether the BBC had been justified, at the time, in reporting that an insult had been heard from the bus, the ECU described "an unusually high level of consultation among colleagues about the content of the recording" and said the decision, "whether or not mistaken, was made entirely in good faith". On the later question of whether the BBC should have continued to defend the claim, the ECU noted that a check commissioned by the BBC from a firm of translators had not been unanimous ("three of the four translators… construing the phrase as 'Dirty Muslims' and one as the Hebrew for 'Call someone, it's urgent'"), and that "the sole exception indicates that it was not the only possible interpretation". It concluded that the BBC "should have led… to recognise at an earlier stage that there was genuine doubt about the accuracy of what it had reported", and that the online article as it then stood no longer met the standards of due accuracy and, once the claim had become controversial, of due impartiality. The complaints were "partly upheld in relation to accuracy and impartiality".

On 3 February 2022 the ECU published an "update and clarification" after representations from the Community Security Trust. It said that a reference to seeking "further verification" did not imply that the CST had verified the existence of the slur; that a reference to turning to the CST "for verification" was about verifying that the video showed the incident, not about the disputed phrase; and that, in a WhatsApp exchange cited in the finding, the CST's concern "was not on confirming or disputing the claim, but on putting the case that, even if a slur had been uttered, there were insufficient grounds for the BBC to refer to it in reports of the incident". The ECU said none of those points changed its conclusions.

Ofcom, in a ruling of 7 November 2022, also found that the online article failed the BBC's guidelines on due accuracy and due impartiality, and that the BBC had made "a serious editorial misjudgment" in not reporting on air that its broadcast claim was disputed. Ofcom "did not consider it necessary to make a determination on the contents of the audio".

See also

• British Broadcasting Corporation
• Ofcom
• Oxford Street Chanukah bus incident
• Tim Davie
• Community Security Trust
• Board of Deputies of British Jews