The BBC’s flagship night-time programme was to air Khan’s clips from his cricketing days, but inadvertently ended up airing his team Akram’s footage.
During its coverage of Pakistan’s election on Newsnight on July 25, BBC aired a clip of former Pakistani cricketer Wasim Akram instead of Imran Khan, confusing the two former cricket legends.
The BBC’s flagship night-time programme was to air Khan’s clips from his cricketing days, but inadvertently ended up airing his team Akram’s footage.
The show’s presenter Evan Davis issued an apology for the mistake. Here’s what BBC Newsnight’s official Twitter page said.
A spokesperson of the organisation said, “We’d like to reiterate the sincere apology we made on air last night for an error that occurred during the programme. We are looking into how this mistake happened and will be tightening our processes on Newsnight to prevent an incident like this happening again.”
Twitterati were quick to react to the error. One user tweeted, “Let me guess – your researcher just googled “Pakistani cricketer” – assuming they all look alike eh?”
In another response a user said, “It’s fair to say the standard of output on BBC Newsnight has been getting worse and worse for years, to confuse two of the world’s most famous cricketers is embarrassing, but not unexpected from a program with such a slack approach to accurate research and honest reporting.”
Khan, leader of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI), claimed victory in the Pakistan general elections. The official result are yet to be declared.
