YORK-BASED BBC football commentator Guy Mowbray was mixed up in a TV subtitling gaffe which saw Newcastle United termed “black and white scum” in subtitles broadcast on Match Of The Day 2.
The BBC said an “unfortunate error” was to blame for the slur against the north-eastern side.
Football writer Paul Brown spotted the error and tweeted a screenshot of the phrase from Sunday night’s show. The author wrote: “MOTD2 subtitler evidently not a Newcastle fan.”
Commentator Guy, who was born in York and went to Huntington School, was discussing Liverpool striker Daniel Sturridge’s good form against Newcastle, saying he had scored five goals against the black and whites.
But subtitling software misunderstood the word “comma”, which had been spoken by the subtitler, known as a “respeaker”, and the software inserted the offensive word “scum” into the text on screen. A BBC spokeswoman said: “Our live subtitling service is normally very accurate and makes our content much more accessible, but there are times when unfortunate errors occur. On this occasion the error was spotted and corrected immediately.”
The match between Newcastle and Liverpool ended in a 1-1 draw
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