BBC says sorry after interviewing man pretending to be US Senator Cory Booker
The BBC has apologised after falling victim to a hoaxer who appeared on air pretending to be a US senator.
The World Service’s Newshour programme featured a discussion with a man billed as Senator Cory Booker, who was asked to give his opinion on US foreign policy.
However, US listeners tuned in to the broadcast on Friday immediately spotted that he had an entirely different voice to the real Booker.
“I’m not sure who the BBC World Service just interviewed on Newshour about US relations with Saudi Arabia, but it definitely wasn’t Senator Cory Booker,” one tweeted.
The programme was later taken down from the BBC website, and the corporation issued a statement that said: “In our Newshour radio programme on Friday, a man claiming to be Senator Cory Booker was interviewed in what appears to be a deliberate hoax.
“We have apologised to Senator Booker and are looking into what went wrong to make sure it doesn’t happen again. The interview only aired once at 2000 GMT on Newshour on Friday 26 February and has not appeared anywhere else.”
The BBC declined to go into further detail about how the man had ended up on the programme, but the corporation has a track record when it comes to putting the wrong person on air.
Most famously, in 2006 a taxi driver named Guy Goma was mistakenly put on live television in an identity mix-up (below).
Mr Goma had been waiting in the foyer of BBC Television Centre to interview for a job in the IT department.
When a BBC staff member asked “Guy” to come forward he followed them and ended up live on BBC News 24, being asked questions about Apple’s legal battle with Apple Corps. The intended guest was Guy Kewney, a technology journalist.
Last year, on Radio 4’s PM programme, Evan Davis introduced “Robert Shapiro, an American lawyer who in 1995 was a member of the team of attorneys that successfully defended OJ Simpson”.
The man on the other end of the line burst out laughing before telling Davis: “I am Robert Shapiro, an adviser to Democratic presidents - not the lawyer. You called the wrong Robert Shapiro.”
