LONDON – The BBC has issued an apology for confusing Pakistanicricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan with his former teammate Wasim Akramin its election-related coverage.
During its flagship night-time news show, Newsnight, BBC2 showed footage offormer left-arm pacer Akram instead of right-handed all-rounder Khan as heemerged as the frontrunner in the Pakistani general elections.
At the end of the programme, presenter Evan Davis said: “We made a mistakein our opening tonight. The footage we showed was of the cricketer WasimAkram not Imran Khan.”
“Don’t know how that happened, sincere apologies for that.”
Both Akram and Khan are well-known faces of Pakistan cricket.
Khan, who retired from the sport in 1992, had led the country to victory atthe 1992 Cricket World Cup, Pakistan’s first and only victory in thecompetition. He has since moved on to lead the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insafparty, which emerged victorious in the elections held.
Akram, meanwhile, has remained linked to cricket since his retirement andspends much of his time commentating on the game.
“We’d like to reiterate the sincere apology we made on air last night foran error that occurred during the programme,” a BBC spokesperson said.
“We are looking into how this mistake happened and will be tightening ourprocesses on Newsnight to prevent an incident like this happening again,”the spokesperson added.
Viewers were quick to pick up on the error on social media, with one sayingon Twitter: Let me guess your researcher just googled Pakistani cricketer’assuming they all look alike eh?’
Back in April, the BBC was similarly caught out for mistakenly referring toSri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena as Indian Prime Minister NarendraModi in a live news broadcast of the Commonwealth Heads of GovernmentMeeting (CHOGM) in London.
The Sri Lankan President was seen disembarking from his car at the entranceof Buckingham Palace to join the other heads of government for the CHOGMlaunch hosted by Queen Elizabeth II when the BBC host said: Modi, the PrimeMinister of India since May 2014 arriving at Buckingham Palace.