The Countess of Mar has written to the Director General of the BBC with a formal complaint about its portrayal of the FITNET trial from 1 Nov 2016 onwards.

3rd November 2016

Dear Lord Hall
Formal Complaint to the BBC re: the purveying of mis-information on 1st November 2016

This is brought to your personal attention because it is such a serious matter.

The BBC is required to be accurate and impartial, but James Gallagher (the BBC News
website Health and Science reporter who was responsible for the item that made the BBC
headlines from 5.30am on 1st November 2016) was neither accurate nor impartial.
On BBC News 24 the breaking news ticker headline repeatedly announced across the screen:

“A successful treatment for children with CFS is being trialled by the NHS.”

The BBC’s Charter says that its primary function is to inform, educate and entertain, but the BBC breached its own Charter by its 24-hour non-stop promotion of a study of myalgic
encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome in children and adolescents (the £1 million
FITNET trial, which stands for Fatigue In Teenagers on the interNET) and which claims
success for a behavioural modification intervention when there is no objective evidence of
any such success in either children, adolescents or adults.

Moreover, the study had not even started to recruit participants: this was not made clear and it was heralded as “Landmark chronic fatigue trial could cure two-thirds” but that was later changed to the nonsensical “Landmark chronic fatigue trial could treat two-thirds“. Chronic fatigue is not the same as ME/CFS.

The item was described thus:

“the BBC and their scientifically illiterate journalists imaginatively and dishonestly spun this as a 2/3 cure rate”.

The letter goes on to look at specific aspects of the complaint and then ends:

I ask that you ensure that the BBC issues a prominent retraction of its endorsement of and
support for the FITNET study and, to counter-balance its support for behavioural
interventions for a proven and classified neuroimmune disorder, the BBC offers a
commensurate right of reply to those with an understanding of the biomedical nature of the disease.

Read full letter