They have to keep the articles at least, although the list is probably borderline and could be the subject of a right-to-be-forgotten takedown.
That is how it works. The articles on the original site are often public record (in the case of the BBC original news stories), so they can't be removed unless they are inaccurate.
What is supposed to happen is, that if they are no longer relevant for one person in the report (report is too old to be legally applicable in a search of the persons history, for example), then they are supposed to be removed from the search
results when
when searching for that person's name. The article will (or should, if Google are doing their job properly) still appear when searching for other search terms.
E.g. Cloaked Wolf in BBC report over shop lifting conviction in 1995
CW tells Google to forget this report on the BBC as it is no longer legally relevant.
Google removes the report from searches containing "Cloaked Wolf".
Searches for Shoplifting, 1995 and other relevant terms will still bring up the report somewhere in the results - as long as it isn't "shoplifting + Cloaked Wolf" etc.
