Farage says he’ll stop paying licence fee over BBC’s ‘shoddy reporting’

NIGEL Farage has threatened to stop paying his TV licence unless the BBC apologises for a report linking him to the death of a Polish man shortly after the Brexit vote.

The broadcaster aired claims that Mr Farage had ‘blood on his hands’ for the attack on Arkadiusz Jozwik, 40, because of his role in the referendum campaign.

The Polish was punched in a head during a row with a teenager in a shopping centre in Harlow, Essex. He fell over and died two days later.

At the time reports claimed that the attack was racially motivated but a court has since heard this was not the case.

However, former Ukip leader Mr Farage said yesterday he lived ‘in fear of reprisals’ because of the BBC’s coverage.

Writing in the Daily Telegraph, he said it ‘caused my family and me more misery than any other in my 25 years in politics’ and ‘opened the floodgates’ to a slew of other reports linking him to the death.

He said he was unable to ‘go out to buy a newspaper without abuse’.

Mr Farage has written to BBC director general Tony Hall demanding an apology for the ‘shoddy journalism’.

‘I have written to him asking for an official apology for a terrible slur that was cast upon me, which I believe was encouraged by one of the Corporation’s senior reporters, John Sweeney, and then aired to the nation,’ he said.

‘If the apology is not forthcoming, I will have no option but to stop paying the BBC licence fee altogether... This is a test of whether the BBC really is the decent and fair public broadcaster it purports to be.’

The spokesman for the corporation said: ‘The BBC’s reporting reflected, like other media, that racial motivation was a line of inquiry the police were looking at and our coverage also featured vox-pops giving differing views including antisocial behaviour as a possibility. ‘The BBC has already examined its reporting of Arkadiusz Jozwik’s death, concluding it was fairly reported, based on what was known and said at the time.

‘We continue to report on Brexit impartially and fairly.’

The 16-year-old behind the attack, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was sentenced to three years in a young offenders’ institution for manslaughter.