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Roger Mosey is the Master of Selwyn College, Cambridge. He was formerly editorial director and the director of London 2012 at the BBC.
The lesson for Tim Davie from this week’s revelations is inescapable: he needs to rethink his own job.
We have seen that managing “scoops” can be deeply problematic for the BBC – the Martin Bashir interview with Princess Diana is just one example of that.
The corporation faces one of its greatest ever tests after the damning Dyson report into the 1995 Panorama interview.
In an age of diminishing deference to the royal family, it was wrong for broadcasters to exclude all other stories.
The new director-general takes over next week at a time of unprecedented political and financial uncertainty for the corporation.
By asking people like Emily Maitlis and Naga Munchetty to provide both the emotive personality demanded by social media and the impartiality demanded by its own guidelines, the corporation puts its people in an impossible situation.
Though the corporation has re-established itself as the unchallenged national broadcaster, government cuts to its funding could still follow.
Public service broadcasting is being given a chance to demonstrate why it exists – and the corporation is rising to the challenge.
The corporation must outline how a more sharply defined public service can still thrive.
Haphazard cuts to valued programmes are no solution to the corporation’s existential crisis.
