The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) came out to justify why Indian spy Kulbhushan Jadhav’s mention from its interview was omitted during a tete-a-tete with Finance Minister Asad Umar after it garnered a whole lot of criticism from Pakistan’s Twitter users.
BBC took to Twitter and said that the omission was “not an act of censorship”, rather it was edited out owing to time constraints.
During an interview to BBC’s Hardtalk, host Stephen Sackur asked Umar a wide-range of questions. However, the televised version did not mention Jadhav, who was sentenced to death by a Pakistani military tribunal for his involvement in espionage last year.
“The reason Kulbhushan Jadhav’s name was deleted from the TV version of the HARDtalk interview with Asad Umar has a simple technical explanation,” said a tweet from the programme’s Twitter handle.
“The recorded interview was too long for our broadcast slot and so had to be edited. This was done separately for radio and TV,” it added saying that it was not done to censor the minister’s words.
The reason Kulbhushan Jadhav’s name was deleted from the TV version of the HARDtalk interview with Asad Umar has a simple technical explanation.
The recorded interview was too long for our broadcast slot and so had to be edited. This was done separately for radio and TV. 1/2— BBC HARDtalk (@BBCHARDtalk) December 13, 2018
“This was not an act of censorship, but clearly confusion has been caused, so we are happy to restore that short section to the TV broadcast and we’ll give the new programme an extra airing on Thursday as well as Friday morning,” the tweet further stated.
His name was omitted from the TV version. This was not an act of censorship, but clearly confusion has been caused, so we are happy to restore that short section to the TV broadcast and we’ll give the new programme an extra airing tonight as well as tomorrow morning. 2/2 https://t.co/STjcCKsWGt
— BBC HARDtalk (@BBCHARDtalk) December 13, 2018
