BrewDog's co-founder and chief executive has formally complained to media regulator Ofcom over what he claims to be a "string of unfounded personal attacks" on his character in a BBC Scotland documentary.
James Watt has also filed a formal complaint direct to the BBC.
In a statement released last night, Mr Watt said the programme - titled “The Truth About BrewDog” - contained numerous factual inaccuracies and was built on the testimony of a handful of US-based ex-employees to present allegations which he says the broadcaster failed to properly put to the company before transmission.
'Grossly false'
“The so-called “Truth about Brewdog” was anything but," Mr Watt said last night.
"The grossly false picture painted by this documentary is simply not true.
"These are deeply hurtful and damaging lies based on the claims of a very small group of ex-employees working directly with the BBC, and I will fight to put the record straight. For a national broadcaster to come out with a hatchet-job like this beggars belief. The BBC should apologise.”
However, the BBC has doubled down on the documentary, saying it is both fair and balanced.
A response from the broadcaster read: “We stand by our journalism and look forward to putting our case via the proper channels in due course - it is BBC policy to give subjects of investigations a fair opportunity to respond to allegations, which is what we did in this case.
“The documentary, which was fair and balanced, included responses from BrewDog’s lawyer. Mr Watt declined our offer to be interviewed for the programme.”
Lawyers
BrewDog alleges that the BBC failed to put properly detailed allegations to BrewDog before broadcast, and refused to properly particularise any allegation – itself contrary to the BBC Charter, and to fair normal standards of journalism.
BrewDog’s lawyers have written to the broadcaster citing Section 5.2 of Ofcom’s Broadcasting Code, which states that “significant mistakes in news should normally be acknowledged and corrected on air quickly”.
BrewDog has followed up with a complaint directly to Ofcom about the programme over two further alleged breaches of the Code including Section 7.9, which seeks to ensure that “material facts have not been presented, disregarded or omitted in a way that is unfair to an individual or organisation”.
Ofcom will decide whether to launch a formal investigation following the outcome of the BBC complaints process.
Complaints
The programme followed a open letter by a group of former BrewDog employees calling themselves “Punks With Purpose” which raised concerns about the firm's culture.
In a 4,000 word rebuttal issued last night, BrewDog said that had the BBC put detailed allegations to BrewDog and Mr Watt beforehand, they would have addressed them all, as they have now done in their formal complaint.
A summary of the complaint noted that “it should also have been apparent to the BBC that many of their sources were ex-employees who have an axe to grind, and if their accounts were broadcast at all then full information on this point should have been put before the viewer in order to properly weigh their accounts”.
It also argued that the publicly-available statistics of the Wiser Report ought also to have given the BBC pause, indicating that the information they were receiving from individuals put forward by Punks With Purpose might not be reflective of the current culture at the company, and “instead indicative of potential extraordinary biases and/or dishonesty within their self-selecting sample”.
Its other complaints focus on alleged inaccuracies over BrewDog’s Lost Forest project, its Buy One Get One Tree promotion and Equity for Punks share scheme and the false allegation that the company failed to act on the results of a 2019 staff survey.