By Andrew Warshaw
April 27 – A complaint that the BBC damaged England’s bid for the 2018 World Cup by broadcasting a hard-hitting Panorama documentary presented by Andrew Jennings three days before the vote has been rejected by the Corporation’s governing body.
The complainant, who is not named in today’s verdict by the BBC Trust’s editorial standards committee, protested that the timing of the broadcast, entitled “FIFA’s Dirty Secrets”, greatly affected England’s chances.
The complainant claimed that “given the evidence of corruption unearthed by the programme it was naïve to think that FIFA’s decision would be unaffected by such coverage”.
But the committee argued in its report that there would have been “no impact if it had been shown a week later” and that as an impartial organisation the BBC “shouldn’t do anything to positively or negatively impact on others”.
The Panorama investigation alleged that three FIFA executives took bribes as part of a wider corruption scandal and accused a fourth official of involvement in a World Cup tickets scandal.
The Sunday Times newspaper, independently, also made a series of damning allegations that led to two senior FIFA executives being suspended and barred from voting on December 2.
The standards committee was asked to look into the complainant’s allegations after they were rejected by both the BBC Trust’s head of editorial standards and the director of BBC News, Helen Boaden.
According to today’s report, Boaden argued that “the issues raised by the programme were relevant to the bidding process, showing the manner in which FIFA officials behave”.
She also said that the story was about to break anyway and that a “fair FIFA process was unlikely to be affected by the programme and an unfair one was unlikely to be affected by a programme broadcast at that late stage in the deliberations”.
The standards committee said that the decision not to proceed with an appeal against the findings of the head of editorial standards was the correct one.
Although there is no firm evidence either way as to whether the Panorama programme affected the vote, those who lobbied for 2018 will be hugely frustrated with today’s ruling.
It is widely believed that several members of the FIFA Executive Committee would have voted for England had it not been for what was perceived, rightly or wrongly, as a witchhunt by the English media.
FIFA President Sepp Blatter even reminded his colleagues of the adverse media reporting just minutes before the ballot in Zurich.
England ended up getting a pitiful two votes and were eliminated in the first round despite a £15 million campaign and the promise of support from several Executive Committee members.
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