THE BBC’s new Verify unit produced and promoted a documentary on conspiracy theory activists based on a flawed survey by King’s College London (KCL), which the academics now admit claimed there were “significantly more protestors than can be the case in reality.”

While KCL now says its survey does not represent “reality,” BBC Verify, which is supposedly committed to battling “disinformation,” does not think it should offer any correction or worry about the quality of its work.

The BBC heavily promoted its documentary Marianna in Conspiracyland as a programme, podcast and a BBC website article fronted by its “disinformation specialist,” Marianna Spring. The KCL survey got national newspaper coverage on the back of the BBC push.

The documentary is about the “cosmic right” — those from a New Age background who have been drawn rightwards via anti-vax arguments to anti-semitic and far-right conspiracy theories.

The focus was on conspiracist monthly newspaper the Light, Britain’s leading “cosmic right” publication, which has gone from flat-Earth mysticism to giving space to anti-Muslim activists like Anne Marie Waters and “Holocaust-questioning” bloggers like Lasha Darkmoon. It is a real problem — but a fringe one.

To pump up the story’s significance, the BBC turned to the KCL policy unit, which produced a survey on the reach of conspiracy theories. In the programme, a KCL academic reported on their findings about the Light newspaper, saying: “Fourteen per cent of the people that we spoke to have heard of it. Of those, 62 per cent of that 14 per cent have actually read a copy, 40 per cent were subscribers, so regularly had it delivered to them, and 51 per cent helped distribute it.”

The KCL professor was treated as an expert witness, his figures unquestioned. But they are nonsense.

The UK adult population is around 47 million, so these figures would mean that 6.6m people have “heard of” the Light, 3.4m people have “helped to distribute it” and around 2.6m “subscribe” to it.

Either the Light is Britain’s top-selling news magazine, with a distribution network around six times larger than the Labour Party, or the survey is wrong.

Challenged about these figures, KCL has now issued an “addendum,” admitting “estimates of engagement with the Light are based on claimed behaviour, and do not fit with what we know about the paper’s likely readership and distribution in reality. False recall could be a factor, as could the online panel sample and method.”

KCL’s survey also suggested 7 per cent of the population had taken part in rallies against vaccination. That would mean nearly 4m people going to anti-vax demos.

KCL reported the same number going to protests on even more obscure “conspiracy” issues, like “digital currencies,” “the deep state” or “15-minute cities.”

After complaints, KCL was forced to admit: “These estimates for taking part in direct action are based on claimed behaviour in response to the questions as asked.

“They would convert into significantly more protestors than can be the case in reality, and so should be treated with caution. This could be due to false recall, a broader interpretation of ‘protest,’ or other reasons, and we will explore this further in a new study.”

KCL claims its other findings — including that “a quarter in the UK believe Covid was a hoax” — have some value, but given the obviously false findings about measurable events, I think this is wrong: there is clearly a problem with survey design, with questions being too vague and presented in a way that it makes it too easy to answer Yes, or a sampling problem, or both.

KCL has admitted the survey is wrong, but the BBC says it makes no difference to its programme. But it does — the BBC documentary is exposing a small but genuine problem, the growth of the “cosmic right,” but trying to picture it as much bigger than it is.

The BBC’s new Verify unit is supposed to specialise in “forensic” and “investigative” journalism, exposing “disinformation,” but it allowed some obviously wrong figures to slip past.

Verify says it is also based on “transparency,” but the BBC’s Verify staff ignored my enquiries, so I had to go to the BBC press office for a response. It gave me this response, which uses a lot of words to say very little.

The BBC said: “The assertions about the scale and impact of the Light made in the Marianna in Conspiracyland podcast are based on a range of evidence and testimony covered in the BBC investigation.

“The 10-part podcast features a small number of the findings from the KCL survey, for which the BBC suggested some research areas, regarding participation in protests linked to conspiracy theories and support of violent action at these protests. These findings are contextualised within the BBC investigation.

“The study provided valuable insight into several aspects of conspiracy belief, which was useful context to the much wider BBC investigation.”

In short, KCL admits it is wrong, but BBC Verify wants to ignore this verification: the “fact-checkers” are ignoring the facts.

The basic problem is that BBC Verify focuses on “disinformation,” which it defines as something done by the “bad guys” — Russians, terrorists or fringe activists. But in fact, propaganda, lies or bias can come from Establishment sources as well: the BBC approach means it won’t fact-check an Establishment source.

In this case, this means it naively accepted absurd figures from KCL because its “forensic” focus only faces in one direction. It also means that both the BBC and KCL picked a minor problem of conspiracy theories at the fringe, while wilfully ignoring a bigger problem in the mainstream.

They claimed to be worried about the growth of the racist “great replacement” theory, which says elites are deliberately letting Muslims “take over” and “replace white people.”

It’s a nasty conspiracy theory promoted by the fringe, but also one presented in the Times and the Mail. Popular hard-right author Douglas Murray promotes “great replacement” themes and is not only reviewed by and writes for these major newspapers, but is a regular guest on… the BBC.

Follow Solomon Hughes on Twitter at @SolHughesWriter.