Even their top stars face sack if they don’t comply with rules
TOP journalists at the BBC who breach impartiality standards could face the sack under the new rules.
Following a hard-hitting report commissioned off the back of the controversy surrounding Martin Bashir’s interview of Princess Diana, the corporation is aiming to restore public trust.
The broadcaster is stressing that none of its 21,500 employees – ‘regardless of seniority, profile or role’ – should be immune from the threat of dismissal for serious failings.
However, it comes amid a series of allegations of bias among high-profile BBC presenters, notably Newsnight host Emily Maitlis – who has faced repeated accusations of partisanship, including a monologue criticising the Government over its handling of the Dominic Cummings Barnard Castle scandal – and Naga Munchetty, who criticised Donald Trump on BBC Breakfast.
Just this month, the BBC received 558 complaints about bias after Today’s Nick Robinson ordered the Prime Minister to ‘stop talking’ in an interview.
And the appointment of Jess Brammar, a former editor-in-chief of Left-leaning news website HuffPost UK, to oversee the BBC’s rolling news channels sparked concerns over impartiality, after her criticism of Mr Johnson and Brexit in now-deleted social media posts. BBC board member Sir Robbie Gibb, Theresa May’s former communications chief, and a co-author of yesterday’s report, is said to have tried to block her appointment, insisting the Government’s ‘fragile trust in the BBC would be shattered’ if she took the role.
Sir Robbie also criticised Lewis Goodall, policy editor of Newsnight, for a New Statesman article last year which accused the Government of creating a ‘lost generation’, asking if there was ‘anyone more damaging to the BBC’s reputation for impartiality?’. The BBC’s ‘action plan’ makes clear that in future no one will be immune from being sacked.
It comes as the BBC’s director-general, Tim Davie, has had to intervene publicly following accusations of bias against top presenters since taking
over last year. After Mr Robinson’s Today programme clash with the PM, Mr Davie said that while its top interrogators needed to ‘robustly hold those in power to account’, it was important that interviews ‘should not become unnecessarily aggressive’.
He rejected questions about whether Miss Brammar’s appointment as executive news editor in charge of 24-hour channels BBC World News and BBC News amounted to ‘confirmation of groupthink at the BBC’.
Mr Davie – who stood as a Tory councillor in the 1990s – insisted the corporation would be in ‘dangerous territory’ if ‘previous political positions’ or social media posts ruled people out of working there. ‘My expectation as a leader of the organisation for anyone joining the BBC is that you leave your politics at the door,’ he told the Royal Television Society.
The BBC plan states that its editorial guidelines will be ‘re-emphasised to all staff, making it clear that deliberate or negligent breaches of a serious nature, or attempts to conceal them, will result in disciplinary action or dismissal, regardless of seniority, profile or role’.
The review – led by Arts Council England chairman and BBC board member Sir Nicholas Serota – highlighted input from newspapers and other broadcasters that ‘it is widely understood that if a journalist is dishonest or attempts to cover something up, they will be dismissed immediately’.