BBC Complaint - Planned Marr interview of Aaron Banks

This is a copy of a complaint I've submitted to the BBC about their plans to interview Aaron Banks (the Leave.EU funder now under investigation by the National Crime Agency).

The Marr show is the wrong place to cover Banks. It is too general and get to know you to interview someone accused of serious crimes. A live interview where he can’t be fact checked and be asked to provide evidence is a mistake.

This would be better covered by Panorama with in depth research and an interview challenging Banks on specific points that have already been explained; Marr’s format is unsuited to this as there is no room for the explanations and many viewers will not be expert.

Newsnight probably could pull it off with a 10 min video followed by an interview but Marr is the wrong venue.

A final concern is the extent to which either the criminal case may be prejudiced by the coverage or less bad but still concerning that avoiding such possibility limits the questions that can be asked or provides a get out from tricky questions.

If you must proceed please do a pre-record and edit and contextualise properly. Even better get Carole Cadwalladr in instead to talk about her work over the last couple of years.