The BBC apologized on air for wrongly saying an Olympics boxer’s mother and sister died, Yahoo Sports reported. The apology said:
“We just want to tell you that we gave you erroneous information about Luke Campbell’s mother and sister and we are happy to tell you that his mum was watching tonight.”
According to Yahoo Sports, the UK boxer Luke Campbell was “confused with that of fellow British fighter Freddie Evans,” whose mother Tracy and sister Scarlett passed away in 2006.”
BBC’s Gabby Logal also tweeted this apology Aug. 11.
“Huge apologies to Luke Campbell’s family. His Mum is alive and well. Some erroneous information made it to air. I can only apologise.”
We wrote to the BBC asking for more information about this error and how it happened. We were sent the following statement from a BBC spokesperson:
“We are very sorry that incorrect information was given out about Luke Campbell’s family in our Olympics Tonight programme, and apologise for any concern or hurt caused to them. As soon as we realised the error, we made an on air correction.”
The UK Telegraph added that “the error was compounded” because guest David Beckham then commented on Campbell’s dead family, saying:
“He has been through a really tough time in his life and boxing was obviously something that he wanted to go into and wanted to kind of prove to people how strong he is mentally and physically. He’s performed at the highest level and won us another gold and his mum and his sister will be smiling down and we are all so proud of what he has achieved.”
We wrote last week when the UK Telegraph apologized for mis-identifying Irish boxer Katie Taylor as British. China’s Metropolis Times apologized earlier this month for saying teen athlete was “shameful.”
Check out all our stories on the Olympics.
UPDATE: 8/21/2012 1:05 PM EST: Added information