Up Next
BBC newsreader Ben Brown had to say sorry after MP William Wragg was accidentally shown during a report about MP Mark Menzies.
At the end of Friday’s bulletin, the News At One presenter issued an apology after the wrong image was shown earlier in the programme.
Tory MP Menzies, a government trade envoy, has been suspended from the party as officials investigate allegations he misused thousands of pounds of campaign funds.
However, while discussing those claims, the BBC team accidentally showed Wragg, who recently resigned from his roles after being blackmailed into sharing colleagues’ phone numbers by a suspected scammer on Grindr.
After the mix-up, Brown said: ‘Now we just need to apologise for a mistake earlier in the programme when we were telling you about allegations against the MP Mark Menzies but we showed a picture of the MP William Wragg which was an error.’
His apology marked the end of the programme, which then faded out.
It isn’t the first time a BBC News broadcast has mistakenly shown Wragg’s image, as a similarly awkward mishap occurred just last week.
On April 9, BBC Breakfast host Sally Nugent was discussing the top headlines as she opened by revealing Wragg had stepped down from his role as vice chairman of the 1922 Committee over his scandal.
She also mentioned Simon Harris, who was due to become Irish Prime Minister later that day, but a photograph of Wragg appeared on the screen behind her.
Despite glancing at the erroneous image, she didn’t acknowledge the mistake and instead carried on with the report.
Wragg had faced calls to resign after telling The Times that he gave out colleagues’ contact details after sending intimate photos of himself to someone on a dating app.
He said that he had been scared into handing over the information because they ‘had compromising things on me’.
The unknown scammer is said to have used the aliases ‘Charlie’ and ‘Abi’ while sending flirtatious messages to coax MPs into sending explicit pictures.
Scotland Yard is investigating the scam that involved at least 12 men in political circles who received unsolicited messages. The newsreader addressed the mistake.
