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October 23, 2003updated 17 May 2007 11:30am

Racing Panorama was ‘unfavourable’

By Press Gazette

A complaint against the BBC about its Panorama programme The Corruption of Racing has been partially upheld by the Broadcasting Standards Commission.

Bookmaker Victor Chandler protested to the BSC on five counts of unfair treatment. The programme featured interviews with a Jockey Club executive and two trainers, which led viewers to believe that Chandler ran “no-lose” betting accounts after they were made an offence under the Rules of Racing in 2002.

The BSC ruled that Panorama did not make it clear that the basis for these accusations – letters produced from Chandler to the trainers – were dated from the mid-Nineties, when trainers were not banned from accepting offers. The four other complaints from Chandler were rejected.

In a statement, the commission said that the “programme’s reference to Mr Chandler’s relationships with trainers as ‘racing’s version of insider trading’, by way of analogy with the serious criminal offence of ‘insider dealing’, created a disproportionate and gratuitously unfavourable impression”.

By Sarah Boden

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