New Delhi: BBC News had to issue an on-air apology to Manchester United fans after "Manchester United are rubbish" mistakenly popped up on their news ticker during the 9 am to 10 am broadcast on Tuesday during a tennis update. The BCC News ticker read a message labeling football club Manchester United as "rubbish". This caught the attention of the viewers and a video clip of the broadcast went viral on social media in no time.
Later in the morning, BBC presenter Annita McVeigh, who was presenting at the time, apologised to viewers and Manchester United fans who may have been offended. The news channel clarified that a trainee had committed the blunder while learning how to operate the ticker, behind the scenes.
Here's the viral clip
BBC Presenter Annita McVeigh Apologises
McVeigh said: “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 making a comment about Manchester United, and I hope that 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 not in earnest and that comment appeared. So apologies if you saw that and you were 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. So that was what happened, we just thought we’d better explain that to you.”
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.”