BBC apologises to former Villa chairman Doug Ellis over Hezbollah gaffe
The BBC has issued an apology to former Aston Villa chairman Sir Doug Ellis after mistakenly linking him with a radical political group.
When a commentator on Match of the Day said that it was "great to see Doug Ellis here in his Villa scarf", the subtitles read "Great to see Doug Ellis here with Hezbollah".
Hezbollah is a Muslim political and militant group based in Lebanon that is considered a terrorist organisation by several countries, including the USA.
The mistake, which happened during Villa's match loss at the hands of Everton last month, was flagged up in a reader's letter to the Radio Times, where a BBC spokesman apologised.
They said: "Match of the Day is a live programme and to subtitle it we used a method known as "live respeaking".
"The voice recognition technology misrecognised the word 'Villa' leading to the error.
We apologise for any offence caused and are working hard to make subtitles as accurate as they can be."
