BBC apologises to an Orange lodge in Comber over claims it made about a cancelled children's GAA event

The corporation has ruled that its initial reporting of the row “fell below the standards of accuracy required” – and a clarification on its BBC News NI website is “true as far as it goes”.

The internal investigation found it “falls short of acknowledging that the original article was at fault and explaining why”.

The secretary of Goldsprings Orange Lodge said he welcomed the findings and accepted the apology as “vindication for the Lodge and it's members”.

Darren Black told the News Letter: “While other news outlets were able to acknowledge that their reporting was factually incorrect and apologise within weeks, it will now be up to BBC NI to explain why it took them almost 11 months to do likewise”.

However, the BBC’s Executive Complaints Unit (ECU) said that while some of the coverage “may have been imprecise”, the issues “remained valid ones for the BBC to reflect, whatever the exact sequence of events”.

They say that is because the statement from Goldsprings Lodge was to “describe and amplify concerns” which it said had been expressed by locals, not to contradict them.

The row relates to the cancellation of a children’s sports event involving the GAA in Comber last July, which the BBC linked to a social media post by the Comber lodge.

For two days, the corporation reported that the cancellation had happened after, or because of, a statement by the lodge – which had said that the GAA’s “presence in Comber” would be opposed by residents.

On the morning of Tuesday 15th July, North Down Cricket Club issued a statement online confirming it had cancelled the event – a decision it said it took the previous morning.

The same afternoon, the lodge issued a statement saying that the GAA’s “presence in Comber” would be opposed until it “takes meaningful steps to ensure it is fully inclusive and sensitive to the history and identity of the Protestant, Unionist and Loyalist community”.

On the Wednesday and Thursday, BBC TV, radio and online reports said that the cancellation had happened “after” or “because” of the lodge’s opposition to GAA involvement.

A complaint by the lodge has taken almost a year to come to a resolution. A number of other media outlets, who had picked up the story from the BBC, have already apologised.

In January TUV MLA Timothy Gaston raised concerns over the delay in dealing with the lodge’s complaint, after other news organisations had already apologised.

A BBC NI spokesperson said: “We published a substantive clarification on the BBC’s website on 25 July, 2025, responding to the specific issues that had been raised with us.”

TUV Assembly candidate Jonathan Jackson has questioned this statement in light of the apology, saying local BBC bosses “were repeatedly asked to escalate the matter to their ECU because the Lodge were unhappy with the response from Belfast”.

He added: “It seems that only when Ofcom got involved and asked where the complaint was in the BBC process did it finally make its way to London.

“And when it did, the BBC’s own most senior complaints body found that BBC Northern Ireland had got this badly wrong and the organisation needed to apologise”.

Last week, the BBC’s ECU wrote to Goldsprings apologising “for the lapse in editorial standards on this occasion”.

The ruling said “the original BBC article and some of the subsequent coverage did suggest a causal link” between the lodge’s statement of concern and the organiser's earlier decision to cancel the event.

“As you and others have correctly observed, the Orange Order's statement could not have been directly responsible for the cancellation of the cricket club's event, as that decision had already been made by the time it was published.

“To the extent that some BBC coverage was based on this mistaken premise, or an uncertain chronology, I agree it fell below the standards of accuracy required by the BBC's Editorial Guidelines”, it said.

However, the corporation defended the “overall impartiality or fairness of the coverage” – saying the “wording of the headline and the programme introductions may have been imprecise but the discussions and differences of opinion which they prompted remained valid ones for the BBC to reflect, whatever the exact sequence of events”.

Mr Jackson said the BBC is “quick to lecture others about accountability, transparency and correcting misinformation” – and should hold itself “to exactly the same standard”.

“The Corporation’s own findings confirm that inaccurate reporting occurred. It confirms that the reporting was based on a mistaken premise. It confirms that the BBC’s subsequent public explanation was inadequate.

“Goldsprings Orange Lodge was right to refuse to be fobbed off when the BBC tried to claim the issue had been addressed when it patently was not - something now confirmed by the BBC itself.

“And the lodge deserves enormous credit for seeing this complaint through to a successful conclusion.

“The BBC has finally conceded what the Lodge was saying from day one”, the Strangford TUV man said.