Now rapped by Ofcom

A Yorkshire radio station reported that Barry Humphries was in a ‘stable condition’ in hospital – three days after he had died.

Coast And County Radio did not correct the mistake and even when investigated by regulators at Ofcom, bosses said they fully complied with rules which require that news ‘must be reported with due accuracy’.

The blunder happened on the station’s Mid-Day Show on April 25 last year, when a reporter delivered an item saying: ‘A hospital in Sydney says the entertainer Barry Humphries, best known for his character Dame Edna Everage, is in a stable condition. A spokesperson for Saint Vincent's also described reports the 89-year-old had gone into an unresponsive state as not accurate. He's been suffering with health issues following hip surgery.’

However Humphries had died on April 22, at the age of 89, as was widely reported across the globe.

When a listener texted in to point out the error, the station removed the item from future bulletins, but it did not issue a correction to the inaccurate item.

Station bosses told watchdogs at Ofcom they decided to ‘let the error pass without comment’ as Humphries’ death was so widely known.

They also sought to blame the third party supplier Independent Radio News, which provides news stories to commercial stations across the UK, saying it had not updated everything as it changed websites, and had been experiencing ‘technical difficulties’ which had affected a number of stations. IRN admitted that they did have an outage on their new website - but three days after Scarborough Radio broadcast the inaccurate article. It also said all stories were deleted after 48 hours in any case.

Ofcom have today issued a critical report into the station, saiying: ‘We took the view that reporting that someone is alive, when they have in fact died three days earlier, was a significant error. 

The regulator said it was ‘unclear’ whether this item was broadcast on more than one occasion.

Coast And County Radio’s owners, Scarborough Radio Ltd,  insisted it ‘fully [complied] with Rule 5.1’, saying they take its news from ‘reputable sources’ who provide ‘accuracy and due impartiality’.

Rule 5.1 states: ‘News, in whatever form, must be reported with due accuracy and presented with due impartiality.’

Ofcom said the rule ‘ensures that audiences can trust news broadcasters to report the facts of the news with appropriate accuracy. This rule goes to the heart of the relationship of trust between a news broadcaster and its audience.’

They added:  ‘We found it concerning that the error was not identified via the licensee’s in-house compliance procedures and that Scarborough Radio was only alerted to the error via a listener.

‘While we acknowledged that the licensee said it has taken steps to prevent errors of this nature recurring, we have concerns about its compliance procedures. We are therefore requesting that the licensee attends a meeting with Ofcom to discuss its approach to compliance.’

Published: 22 Jan 2024