BBC stars too partisan online, claims ex-boss
BBC news and current affairs presenters have forgotten that impartiality rules also apply to Twitter, a former head of news has said.
Mark Damazer said he was taken aback to read the partisan views shared by some BBC staff. It came in the light of the row over Emily Maitlis, the News
night presenter, who retweeted the Labour Party statement: “There cannot be one rule for Dominic Cummings and another for the British people.”
On Friday, after she was publicly reprimanded for a monologue on
Newsnight in which she said Mr Cummings had left the British public feeling like fools, she shared a tweet in which a supporter said she deserved “more respect from her employers”.
Mr Damazer, a former Newsnight editor, said the BBC had to rein in its stars. “The impartiality guide applies to Twitter just as it does to what they’re broadcasting on the Today programme or
Newsnight,” he wrote in The New States
man. “I’ve come across stuff I don’t think they should be writing. These are news and current affairs people.”
Presenters Huw Edwards and Gary Lineker have also been accused of bias online. Mr Edwards faced criticism after liking a tweet saying “Vote Labour for the National Health Service”. He later said the tweet was intended “to be a celebration of our wonderful NHS”. Mr Lineker has become well known for his anti-Brexit stance in his Twitter posts, but the BBC said, as he was not involved in news, his political views did not affect its impartiality.
Richard Sambrook, a former BBC News executive, has been hired to review staff social media use but the BBC insisted this occurred before the Maitlis controversy.