BBC chief to consult LGBT staff on impartiality rules

THE BBC director-general has invited LGBT staff to attend training sessions and consultations on new impartiality guidelines after they were led to believe that attending Pride marches would be forbidden.

In an email sent to staff, Tim Davie acknowledged that there had been confusion around some of the new rules, which included curbs on Twitter usage, advice on using emojis and a ban on “virtue signalling”.

Yesterday he wrote: “There is no ban – and never has been – on staff attending Pride events. We should have been clearer about this and in helping managers give advice last week about how the guidance was to be applied.

“For the majority of staff there are no restrictions on attending marches, protests and demonstrations as private individuals, a position which is clearly set out in the guidance.

“What we’re asking senior leaders, journalists, producers and those of you who work in news and current affairs as well as factual journalism to do is to take care when making decisions about participating in events and not to take a personal public position, via your actions or your words, on public policy issues.

“Specifically on attending marches, it is absolutely fine for these staff to be at Pride, or Trans Pride, but it would not be appropriate to be marching with a political party, or with a group advocating specific policy changes.

“To support you on this, we’ll be rolling out a programme of discussions and training on all of these issues over the coming months, and I hope you’ll contribute – as vigorously as you want.”

Mr Davie has only been in the job since September, but has already caused a stir in trying to tackle repeated accusations of political bias at the BBC.

Those who break the rules face “possible termination of employment in serious circumstances”.

But within hours, some of the BBC’S biggest names undermined the guidance, with news anchor Huw Edwards defiantly tweeting a string of Welsh f l ag emojis, adding: “The BBC’S new social media guidance says that the ‘use of emojis can – accidentally, or deliberately – undercut an otherwise impartial post’.”