The BBC is paying an undisclosed amount of money in libel payment to Italian company the Marcucci Group after incorrectly reporting the company “sold blood products infected with deadly diseases,” the Press Gazette reported. The Press Gazette stated the payment was “substantial.”
The false claims were aired on the BBC’s Panorama program “the Price of Blood.”
While the BBC did “correctly” state that there was “a criminal prosecution brought in Italy against [the Marcucci group] and others relating to the production of some of their blood products dating back to the mid-1990s,” the program ” nevertheless suggested that the claimants were guilty of having sold blood products infected with diseases such as HIV or Hepatitis C which could result in death.”
The BBC’s Clare Kissin reportedly stated that the BBC “did not intend to allege that the claimants had sold or distributed infected blood derivative products or that they had endangered lives.”
iMediaEthics wrote in June when the BBC apologized for a 2008 Panorama documentary that may have contained fake footage.