Daily Mail beats BBC to social care correction

On 18 July we contacted both the BBC and the Daily Mail to highlight errors on their coverage of the cap on social care.

The error

As we flagged in our article last week, both the newspaper and the BBC's website said that the government's cap on social care (£72,000) was double that recommended by Sir Andrew Dilnot (£35,000) in his report on social care funding.

Though the maths might seem straightforward, crucially the Dilnot Commission's recommended cap was £35,000 in 2010/11 prices. On the other hand, the Coalition's cap of £72,000 is in 2016/17 prices, which is when the policy will come into force. As we pointed out in our factcheck, in 2010/11 prices the government's cap will be equivalent to £61,000.

What happened next

Shortly after we contacted them, the Daily Mail silently corrected their interpretation of the figure in their online article. The cap is now described as "almost double the level recommended by an independent review".

Since we contacted them a week ago, however, the BBC's Complaints team haven't so much as acknowledged our request, and their article still reads: "the level at which the cap is being set is twice what was recommended".

This isn't necessarily business as usual for the BBC's correction team. Our past experience with their correction process has been varied: frustrating at times but also very successful at others.

Just today the BBC's Breaking News Twitter account promptly corrected an earlier tweet which claimed that yesterday's train crash in Galicia, Spain was the deadliest since 1944. It's actually the deadliest since 1972.

On this occasion, we're still waiting to hear from the BBC as to why no amendment has been made to the article.