BBC News forced to apologise after ‘Manchester United are rubbish’ ticker message

BBC News have made an on-air apology to Manchester United fans after a message on their ticker was accidentally posted labelling the club as “rubbish”.

The ticker is the strip at the bottom of the screen which runs with current headlines. During a broadcast on Tuesday viewers were stunned to see “Manchester United are rubbish” flash up.

Broadcaster Annita McVeigh, who was presenting at the time, had to apologise to viewers.

“Just while we are on the subject of football, a little earlier some of you may have noticed something pretty unusual on the ticker that runs along the bottom of the screen with news,” she said. “Making a comment about Manchester United and I hope Manchester United fans weren’t offended by it.

“Let me just explain what was happening. Behind the scenes someone was training to learn how to use the ticker and to put text on the ticker so they were just writing random things. That comment appeared, so apologies if you saw that and we offended and you’re a fan of Manchester United. But certainly that was a mistake and it wasn’t meant to appear on the screen.”

A BBC statement added: “There was a technical glitch during training with our test ticker, which rolled over to live programming for a few seconds.

“We apologised for any offence caused on air.”

People have been reacting to the mistake on Twitter.

One person wrote “poor trainee must be mortified! Imagine if that’s their first day...”, with another adding “even the BBC News ticker is laughing at Manchester United...”.

And a third said: “Apology by BBC News after a trainee, learning how to put text on the ticker (the headlines that run along the bottom of the screen) accidentally published the words “Manchester United are rubbish” live on the broadcast... Fair and accurate reporting, imo.”

United finished sixth in the Premier League this season and failed to pick up silverware in the campaign.