Two reports in a Scottish daily newspaper have highlighted powerful criticisms of UK media reporting on gene editing in the context of the Boris Johnson government’s new bill on deregulating gene-edited plants and animals in England.

The first of these stories about media misrepresentation hit the papers last weekend under the headline, Food experts slam the BBC for “lies” about gene-edited foods. In an exclusive, the National’s political correspondent, Xander Richards, reported accusations that the BBC and other media have been “repeating uncritically and ad nauseam” UK Government “lies” about gene-edited foods.

Richards noted how the BBC in its reporting in multiple stories on its website had contrasted gene editing, which it presented as just involving “snipping out a small piece of DNA”, with genetic modification, which it said “involves adding genes, sometimes from a different species”.