Questions BBC must answer on Adams ‘final solution’ row

FOLLOWING several emails from The National, the BBC has eventually apologised after radio presenter Kaye Adams read out a text which compared the SNP’s “Tory-free Scotland” slogan to the rhetoric the Nazis used during the Holocaust.

The corporation said “on reflection” the text should not have been broadcast and it was “sorry for the offence it caused”.

This response was only sent to this paper at 6.45pm on Tuesday, despite the first enquiry being sent at 2pm on Monday.

Following this, The National has put a selection of key questions to the organisation to try and establish who decided this text was appropriate to be read out, what action has been taken since the incident and what will be done to ensure this lack of editorial judgement does not happen again.

The National has also asked whether a public apology will be made.

The questions that have been put to the BBC as of yesterday morning are as follows:

l The BBC guideline 4.3.3 talks about making “reasoned decisions, applying consistent editorial judgement” on whether to include or omit perspectives. Do you believe this guideline was followed by Kaye Adams and those that work on the programme?

l What is the process a listener’s text goes through before it is seen by the presenter?

l What is the decision-making process for deciding whether a text is appropriate to be read out on air?

l Who is ultimately responsible for deciding whether a text is appropriate to be read out?

l You said in your apology that the production team and senior editors have been spoken to. What has been said to the production team and senior editors following this incident?

l Has anyone spoken to Kaye Adams about her reading out the text?

l If so, what has been said?

l What actions will be taken to ensure poor editorial judgement like this does not happen again?

l Will the BBC make a public apology for this error of judgement?

The National asked for a response from the BBC by 5pm yesterday but had still not acknowledged receipt of the email prior to printing.

During BBC Radio Scotland’s Mornings show on Monday, Adams read: “Slowly getting rid of all political opposition, this is the rhetoric of the 1930s, says John. What about the 700,000 Scots who vote Conservative, are their political viewpoints to be marginalised from Scottish society and ultimately banned from expressing their opinion?

“Is this Humza’s ‘final solution for dealing with the Tory problem’?”

The line is a reference to the Nazi slogan “Endlösung der Judenfrage” the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question”. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum says this phrase describes “the deliberate

THE BBC made a “mistake” in choosing to broadcast Israel’s defence of genocide charges at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in full – but only show clips of South Africa’s submission arguing the opposite, a top official has said.

David Jordan (below), the director of editorial policy and standards at the BBC, told MPs on Westminster’s Media Committee that the news team may have “done it differently” if they were covering the ICJ case again.

Jordan was asked to speak after Tim Davie, the BBC directorgeneral, repeatedly declined to say whether he thought it had been fair for the corporation to broadcast the Israeli defence in full while South Africa’s counter-arguments were only shown in part.

Labour MP Julie Elliott asked: “Do you think it was fair to have a tiny bit of the South African submission and then switch to the Post Office [inquiry] – which again, is a very, very important story – but then have hours and hours the next day of the other side’s [Israel’s] submission? “Do you think that was fair?” Elliott pushed: “Do you think that was fair and impartial and balanced?”

Davie responded: “I think overall when you look at our coverage on the rulings, we’ve been in a reasonable position.”

Elliott then addressed her question to Jordan instead, saying: “David, do you think it was fair and impartial? The coverage of those two days of hearings I’m talking about, not the rest of the news.”

The BBC’s editorial policy director responded: “I think you’ve put your figure on something very important about what happened, because it only happened on our UK output.

“The international output covered the two sides of that conflict and of the presentations that were made to the ICJ. They covered them equally in our international coverage.

“In our UK coverage, because the hearing on the Post Office was being held at the same time, they made the editorial decision to go with the Post Office coverage rather than the other coverage, which, as you could tell, was a very difficult decision to make.

“When they looked at it, when news looked at it in retrospect, they did think that perhaps they made a mistake in not making the two live coverage events similar or the same.” Jordan went on: “So it was just about the live coverage on the news channel on those two days, which wasn’t absolutely equivalent.

“And in this particular conflict, if you don’t have absolute equivalence, as you know, it leads to people suspecting that you’re doing something deliberately to be biased. That isn’t the case.

“It was genuinely a difficult editorial decision about which hearing they went with.”

He added: “News have said that if they thought about it again, they might have done it differently.”

After the ICJ hearings from South Africa and Israel in January, the top court issued an order telling Israel to take all measures within its power to prevent genocide.

It also said the case for genocide happening in Palestine was “plausible”.