Words the Family Never Said. File a BBC Editorial Guidelines Complaint About the Newry Headline.

BBC News online, 4 September 2024. The article itself quotes Anu Okusanya's family: she 'thought she was running for her life. Unfortunately she ran into her death.' The BBC's own video uses the same words, 'ran into her death.' But the article headline put a different phrase inside quotation marks, 'ran to her death rather than safety,' words the family never said. It also calls a woman who had been attacked twice before, and who 'had to run to protect herself,' an 'Attack witness.' File a Stage 1 BBC complaint via the official Complaints API, anchored to Section 3 (Accuracy), in one click.

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BBC News

“Attack witness 'ran to her death rather than safety'”

via BBC Complaints API (Stage 1) · ECU is Stage 2 · Ofcom is Stage 3

One Stage 1 complaint, anchored to Section 3 (Accuracy), addressed to the coverage, not to any individual journalist.

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About this campaign

On 4 September 2024, BBC News online published an article headlined 'Attack witness ran to her death rather than safety' (article c7v5yn6q15do). It concerned the death of Anu Okusanya, a 46-year-old care worker who had moved from Nigeria to work in Northern Ireland's care sector, after she fled the scene of an attack on another person near her home in Newry during weeks of anti-immigration violence.

What the family actually said. The BBC's own article quotes them: 'She thought she was running for her life. Unfortunately she ran into her death.' A caption in the same article reads 'Gbenga Oluwasanya said his sister ran into her death after seeing the attack.' The BBC's own video report is headlined 'Attack witness ran into her death, family say.' The family's words were 'ran into her death'.

What the headline put in their mouth. The article headline changed 'ran into her death' to 'ran to her death' and added the clause 'rather than safety', then kept the whole phrase inside quotation marks attributed to the family. The words 'rather than safety' appear nowhere in the family's account, and nowhere in the article. Quotation marks are meant to carry what a person actually said.