THE BBC’s Kaye Adams has been forced to make an on-air correction after she interrupted a caller to wrongly make a claim about SNP ministers.
Adams was hosting a phone-in on the UK Government’s decision to use Section 35 of the Scotland Act to block gender reforms passed by Holyrood when the incident happened.
She had been taking a call from a “Tommy in the Highlands”, who was making the point that Scotland’s Parliament had seen MSPs of every colour back the gender reform bill.
“The consultation had been going on for a number of years, the Westminster government have been involved in that conversation, Alister Jack personally was involved in that conversation and he didn’t see a need to contest any single part of this bill,” Tommy said.
“Conservative MSPs have voted for it. Labour MSPs have voted for it. Green MSPs and Liberal Democrat MSPs have voted for it …”
Here Adams chimed in, claiming that “some SNP ministers resigned over it”.
Tommy, correctly, said: “One SNP minister resigned.”
But Adams wasn’t having that. “Might have been two,” she insisted.
— The Jouker (@ScotJouker) January 17, 2023
Before Tommy could get another word in, she moved on to speak to journalist Kevin Schofield instead.
But the BBC host was forced to return to the embarrassing moment a little later in her show, likely after some producer flagged to her that she had been wrong.
However, Adams seemed to have completely forgotten where the incorrect assertion had ever come from.
“On the phone in this morning we were talking about the Gender Recognition Act, a good conversation that we had,” she began.
“I think we had some kind of dubiety over how many SNP ministers resigned over the reform.
“Only one. Only one. Ash Regan, the minister for community safety. She decided to step down because of her objection to the Gender Recognition Reform Act.
“So, there you go just in case there was any confusion over that at all. One SNP minister resigned over the Gender Recognition Reform Act.”
Where the confusion could have come from is a mystery.
An SNP source told the Jouker that callers to the BBC’s phone-ins should at the very least not be interrupted by hosts pushing false statements.
They said: "When BBC Radio Scotland's flagship phone-in is discussing complex issues, listeners should be able to expect that callers stating facts are not interrupted by the host making inaccurate assertions which mislead the audience.”
“The host should have accepted she was wrong and apologised on air,” they added.
While Adams did offer a correction, it fell very far short of an apology – she didn’t even acknowledge where the “dubiety” may have come from.
