Grade: 'BBC report damaged aid-giving'

Former BBC chairman Michael Grade has accused the BBC of damaging the public perception of aid work by broadcasting a "smear" story about Bob Geldof's Band Aid.

Last night, the BBC apologised to Geldof for a report that gave the impression money raised by Band Aid in 1985 for famine relief in Ethiopia had actually been spent on weapons.

Grade, a trustee of the charity group, said that it was "outrageous" that the BBC had tried to "sex-up" the story by making references to Band Aid and Geldof.

He also criticised the BBC for taking seven months to apologise, after the Band Aid Trust complained immediately after the report was aired in March on BBC World Service's Assignment programme.

Speaking this morning on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Grade said: "We are very glad, finally, to reassure all the millions of people across the world that have given money over the years, given millions of pounds to Band Aid and Live Aid to relieve suffering, that we can reassure them that the money did not go to arms."

Grade said that there was no firm evidence that any money raised by the 1985 Live Aid concerts or the Band Aid campaign had ever been misappropriated.

"Journalists from all over the world for twenty odd years, from World In Action to Panorama to the New York Times, have tried to find evidence of this but never have," he said.

"All the evidence we have...is this really dodgy Assignment programme which did its best to use Live Aid music, Band Aid music, Bob Geldof, everything it could to smear the Live Aid operation."

Grade claimed that the BBC's apology was merely a "face-saving exercise" and the report has "damaged" the public perception of aid-giving for famine-struck areas.

"They have made a terrible, terrible mistake - they have damaged 24 years of work, they have damaged the public perception of giving aid to relieve starving people round the world. It's just shocking," he said.

"And to sit and try and defend the little bit of their story that was true, it's outrageous."