Is factual accuracy too much to ask from BBC presenters like Chris Packham?

On Sunday evening, the BBC presenter Chris Packham took to social media to tell the world that they should support his anti-shooting campaign because declining populations of lapwings are ‘still being shot’. Unfortunately for him, this is utter tosh. No one is shooting lapwings, as Packham acknowledged five hours later in an apology on Twitter. 12 hours after that, a similar retraction appeared on his Facebook page. Yet even now, almost 48 hours on, neither of the original posts have been deleted.

This fixation with the passing of mere hours may sound petty, but in the context of social media 48 hours is a lifetime. Packham has 48,608 followers on Facebook and 175,000 followers on Twitter, all of whom have had 48 hours to see these posts and react. And a reaction is exactly what these posts are designed to elicit; in a classic case of modern animal rights campaigning, they blend celebrity social media presence with a false accusation and a link to a parliamentary petition seeking to ban something.