I've just read that report and thrown my toys out of the pram. It's such a badly written piece, highly provocative and deliberately going out of its way to paint Wasps as villains deliberately setting out to defraud the taxpayer.
Anyway, I decided to complain to the BBC so will see what they respond with. This is what I wrote if anyone is interested:
I've just read your report into 'Wasps debts totalling £95million when they went into administration' by Simon Gilbert. There is a huge emphasis throughout on 'costing taxpayers millions of pounds' as though the business deliberately set out to defraud the public . It's heavily provocative, lacks depth and objectivity and cherrypicks salacious facts designed to paint Wasps as villains. It clearly fails to take into account the impact of Covid on the business and conveniently omits finer details on the distribution of the debts in the administrators report. He claims Coventry city FC are owed £465,000 yet fails to mention how much they distressed Coventry City Council in order to drive the price down (leading to Wasps buying the stadium) and the repeated litigation by SISU, the CCFC owners, which aimed to financially distress all parties over a sustained period of time.
It's also been written by 'political correspondent' Simon Gilbert, who is far from neutral and hardly fits the impartiality tag that the BBC claims to uphold. There couldn't be a more politically incorrect and unsuitable viewpoint for this story. I come to the BBC to read clear, well balanced articles. This piece (and previous by this reporter) have been unprofessional and failed in objectivity. This piece has a leading 'tabloid' style edge, loaded to provoke an emotive response. It feels more like gossip and may well be aligned with his work for The Mirror online.
Let's just consider his 'neutral' standing:
He is a lifelong Coventry city fan
He is a long term host of the CCFC podcast
He led the Coventry Telegraph's #bringCityhome campaign in the summer of 2014
He wrote the book 'Without a Home: The Fight Behind The Sky Blues' Return from Exile' in 2016
He has campaigned against Wasps Rugby club in a variety of media, social media and online since they purchased the Ricoh/CBS arena legally. I don't expect the BBC to indulge journalists' personal vendettas and maintain higher standards.