In January 2020, I made my way down from my desk on the third floor of New Broadcasting House to the BBC canteen. Savings – cuts, to most people – had to be made across the corporation’s news division, we were told by bosses. Four hundred and fifty jobs would be axed to help save £40 million. But, more significant – I believe – was the restructuring of BBC News announced alongside this. And, on the day after the double resignation of the BBC’s director general Tim Davie and head of news Deborah Turness, this helps explain the crisis the BBC finds itself in.
To achieve additional savings, the newsroom would be streamlined and restructured into “story” teams. No longer would individual programmes – Today on Radio 4 or Victoria Derbyshire on BBC 2, for example – make their own news with their own reporters. Instead, central “story-led” teams would plan how the BBC would cover a certain topic, and then roll it out across the corporation. This, it was argued, would stop contributors receiving multiple calls from different parts of the BBC and cut down on duplication. But, it also – I believed both then and now – inevitably would destroy diversity of thought. I made this point to BBC News’s then editorial director, Kamal Ahmed, at the time. Who would decide what “take” would be the BBC’s on any given topic, I asked? Wasn’t there a danger that what we might gain in terms of costs and savings, we would lose in terms of nuance and thinking? Some subjects didn’t lend themselves to one viewpoint.
When I got back to my desk, I had emails from both long-standing colleagues and complete strangers in the building, who had watched the announcement on the internal system. “Exactly!” they said, thanking me for raising the concern. How could the bosses not see it?
Reading through the memo that has brought down two of the most senior figures at the BBC, I cannot help thinking that the groupthink these structural changes brought, has been a significant factor in their downfall. In a lengthy note to the BBC Board, leaked to the Telegraph, Michael Prescott – a former political editor of the Sunday Times and independent adviser to the BBC – set out his concerns about numerous parts of the BBC’s news and current affairs coverage.
There has been detailed discussion of a particularly egregious editing of Donald Trump’s remarks made on 6 January 2021 to make it appear like he called for people to attack the US Capitol, but the memo is also critical of the corporation’s coverage of sex and gender, race, and the war between Israel and Gaza. Prescott wrote that his motivation for the note was “despair at inaction by the BBC Executive when issues come to light.” Trump is now threatening to sue the corporation for $1bn (£760m).
Looking at that list of themes, it is clear these are all areas where views are polarised. They warrant thoughtful discussion and exploration. There are some who argue that the BBC has no role to play in a bitterly polarised world, where consensus now rarely exists. Therefore it cannot survive.
I believe the opposite. But, as my former Newsnight colleague Mark Urban has pointed out, the “hunt for views or clicks” has led the BBC towards a “tendency to produce media output that panders to majority views rather than challenges them.” BBC chairman, Samir Shah, is right in his letter today (10 November): there has never been a greater need “for the public to be informed in a way that is impartial, truthful and is based on evidence they can trust.” This is why I, and so many others, joined the BBC, and were so proud to work there. The corporation has a unique and deeply important role to play in society. It is not beholden to shareholders and can thereby operate without fear or favour in a way no other commercial media entity can. It can – and must – probe the most difficult topics and undertake the investigations that may not be commercially viable but are in the public interest. But this is only possible if thinking is ‘allowed’, if those who ask questions about the orthodoxies of our times are encouraged to do so, and are supported by those in senior positions.
What stands out in so many of the examples cited in Prescott’s memo is that there has been a failure to ask the most basic questions: is what I am being told true? Might this be down to something else? Most news journalists at the BBC work exceptionally hard. In the fast-moving world of 24-hour coverage, it can be difficult to find the time to probe properly before rushing something to air. But this is much less so for more in-depth, longer form pieces. That investigations have had to be pulled in their entirety – as in the case of an alleged “ethnic penalty” in car insurance premiums story – is deeply troubling.
Just as disappointing as some of the examples cited by Prescott – which Shah insists have not been ignored – has been the reaction from some of the BBC’s senior figures. It has been painful to watch the obfuscation and insistence that problems go no wider than the dodgy Trump edit. To blame the BBC’s misfortunes on an alleged coup from members of the board misses the genuine problems it faces. Even if there has been a concerted effort to bring down senior figures – and I do not have any inside track on this – it does not negate the content of the leaked memo that began this crisis.
On complex issues such as sex and gender – something that arguably divides opinion even more than the current occupant of the White House – the corporation’s coverage has been wanting. It has not got the balance right. And it should say so. I can understand the defensiveness. Whenever the corporation comes under attack, it is horrible for its employees. Everyone is unfairly tarred with the same brush, and the vast majority continue to work hard to produce news that the nation can trust on a daily basis. But not being open about mistakes only serves to help those who do wish to see the BBC fail.
I am not one of those people. The BBC must turn this crisis into an opportunity. The news bosses, whose “defensiveness” Prescott was so concerned about when “worrying systemic issues” were raised, must display the bravery their salaries demand. The corporation must remind those who have become disillusioned why it can still be trusted, and part of that is owning up when things have gone wrong. I welcome Shah’s commitment to revisit each point raised in Prescott’s memo, with further action taken if necessary. The BBC is worth fighting for. Now it must show why.
[Further reading: Exclusive: BBC director general Tim Davie resigns]
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