The BBC have found themselves in hot water again with Lord McAlpine after incorrectly announcing he was dead. The announcement is thought by some to be a knee jerk reaction to criticism they failed to cover the death of Elvis properly in the 1970s.
“We would like to apologise to Lord McAlpine for accusing him of being dead,” the director General said. “He can rest assured he will be getting a large payment usually reserved for sacked employees. Again.”
Although the BBC published the accusation of death, they have tried shifting the blame to ITV’s silver fox, Phillip Schofield.
“We had no intention of publishing the claims, but then we had credible information it was true,” the DG continued. “It was on a list held by Mr Schofield that included names of other possible dead people that he got off the internet.
“Among those on the list were Jim Davidson, Bruce Forsyth and Nick Clegg. But we have made the decision not to make those names public.”
The reaction on twitter has been much more measured after the last time the BBC ran speculation about Lord McAlpine.
However Sally Bercow seems to have forgotten the damage to someone’s reputation and her pockets her tweets can cause after she wrote “Why is Lord McAlpine trending *RIPface**”.
