So Sarah Smith has made a mistake… get over it

WHEN I used to visit my gran as a boy, back in the days when there were only three TV channels, sport would often be the only thing worth watching.

And often when it came to the crucial moment of a 60-yard putt, a century break or a treble 20 my dear old Nana would remark, with perfect deadpan delivery: “How did he miss that, it’s easy?”

It was my gran’s hilarious dismissal of the years of hard work and dedication that it takes to reach the highest level of a sport that I thought of when I read the criticism fired at Sarah Smith for mistakenly claiming Alex

Salmond had said he wanted Nicola Sturgeon to resign.

Clearly, little consideration was given to the pressures faced by the BBC News Scotland editor, or that reporting on live TV might not be as simple as they think.

Instead, the howls of protest from the social media hound dogs were palpable.

Of course, the fact she is the daughter of the late Labour leader John Smith and had made a previous gaffe in a bulletin, when she said the First Minister “enjoyed” taking a separate lockdown approach from England, will only have fanned the flames.

Self-appointed defenders of the “truth” concluded there was a “clear pattern” of bias. Conspiracy theories and echo chamber conviction were abound; the hatred was as predictable as it was tedious. And while rejecting

Self-appointed defenders of the ‘truth’ concluded there was a ‘clear pattern’ of bias

claims by her colleagues that she was being bullied, the Twitter judges and juries went on to demand her resignation, with the hashtag “sack Sarah Smith” trending on social media. At the weekend it was revealed her February report led to 348 complaints to the BBC.

Needless to say, on both occasions Smith quickly apologised, but that was never going to satisfy the baying crowd, hungry for blood.

To assume that a clearly honest mistake is all part of some thinly concealed pro-unionist BBC agenda is the stuff of nonsense. I’ve spent a quarter of a century working in busy, often chaotic newsrooms, and mistakes unfortunately do slip through, despite every effort to avoid them.

I’ve made a few whoppers over the years. These include missing words, misspellings or getting the wrong end of the stick entirely. However, some gaffes can be unintentionally humorous.

On one occasion a story about proposed changes at Edinburgh’s Royal Hospital for Sick Children had a splash headline which read, “Sick Kids to be cut in half”. I didn’t write it, but I saw it and unbelievably didn’t think there was anything wrong at the time.

Everyone has the right to complain. But to target someone just for a momentary lapse is petty and cruel. I know many journalists, and I include myself in this, who have had sleepless nights all because of a simple error.

But, as Smith’s colleague

Martin Patience wrote on Twitter, when you make a mistake on telly there’s no hiding: “So, honestly, ask yourself: have you ever made a mistake at work?” I think we all know the answer to that.