BBC Insists Verify Project Is ‘Business As Usual’ Despite Months-Old Articles
Veteran wonk Sam Bowman pointed out on Twitter that BBC Verify seems to have slowed down recently with old stories on its top page. Sure enough, only half of the top stories you see when landing on its page are from this week. Scroll down and more items are from June. One is even from December last year…
Guido got in touch with the BBC to ask about this and was told that it’s “completely untrue to say that there have been cuts to Verify… It’s business as usual.” That is: “it’s always been like this”…
According to an FOI request from Guido, the BBC moved staff from other departments into the BBC Verify Team this year – As of February 2024 there were 63 people with combined salary costs of a whopping £3.2 million. Last month they advertised a correspondent position in the team for £69,000…
According to the ‘latest updates’ section, since the beginning of last week Verify has produced nine stories. Nine stories in twelve days – that’s 32 hours per story. It also means that the 63 staff have been paid around £13,675 per article. Maybe the BBC should verify this project’s value for taxpayer money…
