This is a version of an email that I sent on 7th May to Whistledown Productions, who are responsible for Feedback on BBC Radio 4, including a few explanatory links that weren't necessary for the email.
Update (17th May): There was no reply from Whistledown. A version was submitted to the BBC on 17th May as an official complaint (slightly edited to meet the 2000-character limit).
On Thursday 1st May BBC Radio 4 broadcast an edition of Feedback, the programme devoted to listeners' views on BBC Radio. The first section of the programme consisted of correspondence from a number of listeners apparently complimenting BBC Radio on its coverage of the Pope's funeral, followed by an interview with Aleem Maqbool, Religion Editor for BBC News. The programme is available to hear here.
There was no indication on the programme that there had been no live coverage of the Pope's funeral on the BBC's domestic radio services. As indicated here, there was television coverage on BBC One and on the BBC News channel, but the only radio coverage was on the BBC World Service. This was in an extended edition of the news programme "Weekend" and the service was not covered in full. The World Service coverage was also carried on the "Live News" stream on BBC Sounds but there wasn't much publicity about this.
As Feedback doesn't normally cover either television or the BBC World Service, it seemed an odd thing for listeners to be writing to the programme about. The first comment broadcast by Feedback appeared to be about the TV coverage, as it referred to an opportunity to "see the whole mass".
The second comment was almost certainly about the World Service coverage, as it referred to the "British-based media coverage", so was presumably from an overseas listener. Exactly the same audio clip was played on Over to You, the World Service's equivalent programme, and it can be heard at around 3:40 here. Over to You and Feedback are both made by Whistledown Productions so it's possible that correspondence sent to one programme may have been included in the other. However there was no mention on the programme that the correspondence wasn't sent directly to Feedback.
I'm not sure where the third comment came from.
The comments made by Andrea Catherwood at the start of the interview gave the clear impression that listeners had written to Feedback complimenting BBC Radio on its coverage of the funeral. Some listeners may have been misled into thinking that there had actually been live coverage on Radio 4, 5 Live or elsewhere. There was no correspondence commenting on the lack of coverage, which I had been expecting when I tuned in to the programme.
Please could you explain how Feedback was able to present such a misleading item?
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