Dawn Butler hits out at BBC for confusing her with black MP Marsha de Cordova

Bonnie Christian4 February 2020

The BBC has found itself at the centre of another diversity row after a picture of Labour MP Marsha de Cordova was wrongly labelled as her colleague Dawn Butler.

An image of Battersea MP Ms de Cordova speaking from the Commons on Monday was aired on the BBC.

But the strapline identified her as Ms Butler, who is MP for Brent Central and one of the candidates for the Labour deputy leadership.

The BBC later apologised for the mixup, saying: "We sincerely apologise for this mistake. Sometimes we incorrectly identify MPs at the moment when they stand to speak. This error was immediately corrected on screen."

The incident comes after the broadcaster was last week forced to apologise for mixing up Kobe Bryant with LeBron James in a report on the helicopter crash that killed the sporting legend.

Ms Butler shared the image, hitting out at the mistake. She wrote: “@BBCNews @BBCPolitics I love my sister @MarshadeCordova but we are two different people.

“Marsha is amazing and deserves to be called by her own name. Diversity in the workplace matters it also helps to avoid making simple mistakes like this.”

Ms de Cordova later retweeted the post, writing: “@BBCPolitics @BBCParliament This is what happens when the media does not represent the society it reports on.

“Representation matters. Diversity matters. This cannot continue.”

She later tweeted: "It’s not ok at all. Still no apology from @BBCPolitics @BBCParliament @BBCNews".

Many responded to Ms Butler’s tweet calling the broadcaster to make urgent changes.

Founder of Women in Leadership Dr Shola Mos-Shobamimu wrote: “Clearly there's no threshold of shame for @BBC to keep demonstrating an ineptitude worthy of an institutionally dysfunctional organisation projecting bias & feeding negative stereotypes.

“Black. People. Are. Not. The. Same.”

After the incident with the Bryant report, Paul Royall, editor of BBC News at Six and Ten, tweeted after the error, saying: “We apologise for this human error which fell below our usual standards on the programme.”

People were quick to point out that the error happened because of a lack of diversity in newsrooms.

A 2018 report found only 14.8 per cent of the broadcaster’s workforce were from a BAME background in that same year.

  • An earlier version of this story carried a photograph supplied by Getty Images, which it had incorrectly captioned as being Marsha de Cordova when it was Streatham MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy. The Evening Standard apologises unreservedly for the error

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