BBC Pauses Verify Live Blog to Focus Fact-Checking on Main News Pages

The BBC has shelved its Verify Live blog, four months after the departure of Deborah Turness, who promoted the service’s launch while chief executive of BBC News. Lindsay McCoy, executive editor of BBC Verify, wrote in an internal email that bosses had put Verify Live on pause for the last few weeks and now do not intend to restart it.

McCoy stated that the Verify Live format has not matched how people want to consume the work and it is not reaching the desired audience numbers.

As a result, the team will focus efforts on strengthening its presence on the main BBC News website and live page. The Verify Live service was not thought to have run since March 2 2026, days after the start of the Iran war. Over its nine-month lifespan, it generated only about 200,000 page views on the day of its demise.

BBC’s other live blog pages secure tens of millions of views. The BBC Verify Live blog launched in June 2025 and was prominent on the BBC News homepage and app. Audiences had been told to expect daily updates in which fact-checking journalists shared their work throughout the day via a real-time live news feed.

The Times reported that insiders described the promotion of the corporation’s fact-checking as overkill that did nothing to attract key audiences. BBC Verify Live hired an assistant editor in May 2025 with an advertised salary of up to £75,000 plus London weighting. Two other staff members were hired for BBC Verify Live on salaries of up to £55,000 each.

One staff member told The Times that licence fee payers’ money had been seemingly wasted on a pet project that was quietly wound down with no transparency. In its final days, BBC Verify Live fact-checking posts covered the proportion of fixed penalty notices issued for fly-tipping at 5 per cent. The service reported that President Trump’s State of the Union address lasted one hour 47 minutes.

It also reported that two Transport for London stations have signs in foreign languages. BBC Verify was established in 2023. It covered conflicts and the UK and US elections in 2024. The BBC annual report stated that the team has seen a significant increase in the audience accessing BBC Verify content and attracted an average of more than two million weekly visitors, up nearly 50 per cent year on year.

BBC Verify has a wider fact-checking team of up to 100 staff. The BBC Verify Live team is understood to be feeding material into the main live pages along with this wider team. One supporter of the project told The Times that the demise of the live blog after the BBC set out a £500 million cost-cutting plan did not signal any wider lack of confidence in its fact-checking team.

The supporter described Verify Live as always a small, experimental trial. The employee added that it is not a shocker particularly given the cuts challenge and that it does not diminish BBC Verify, which is growing in so many other ways.