Maitlis broke BBC rules with Cummings rant
EMILY MAITLIS breached impartiality guidelines when she opened Newsnight by stating that Dominic Cummings had broken lockdown rules and made the British public feel like fools, the BBC admitted last night.
After her monologue provoked a political storm, the corporation released a statement saying that the BBC Two programme had fallen short of required standards.
Although the BBC did not go as far as an apology, Maitlis was said to be furious that she and her colleagues had been publicly reprimanded and she did not appear as planned on last night’s programme. The presenter Katie Razzall hosted the show.
The episode threatens to reignite a row between the BBC and Downing Street over perceived bias in political reporting.
In her opening remarks on Tuesday night’s programme, Maitlis said: “Dominic Cummings broke the rules. The country can see that, and it’s shocked the Government cannot.”
Mr Cummings maintains that he kept within the guidelines when he travelled to Durham with his wife and child.
Maitlis also criticised Boris Johnson’s “blind loyalty” to his special adviser and said the public mood is one of “fury, contempt and anguish”.
She said of Mr Cummings: “He made those who struggled to keep to the rules feel like fools and has allowed many more to assume they can now flout them.” The monologue was deemed suitable for broadcast by Esme Wren, Newsnight’s editor.
Conceding that the programme had broken impartiality rules, the BBC said:
“We’ve reviewed the entirety of last night’s Newsnight, including the opening section, and while we believe the programme contained fair, reasonable and rigorous journalism, we feel that we should have done more to make clear the introduction was a summary of the questions we would examine, with all the accompanying evidence, in the rest of the programme.
“As it was, we believe the introduction we broadcast did not meet our standards of due impartiality. Our staff have been reminded of the guidelines.”
The introduction appeared to infuriate members of the Newsnight team. Lewis Goodall, the programme’s policy editor, “liked” a tweet from a former colleague who wrote that the BBC had made “the wrong call completely” and now appeared “spineless”.
During the programme, Maitlis interviewed two politicians who called for Mr Cummings to quit – Craig Whittaker, a Conservative MP, and Ian Blackford, from the SNP – and one who supported him, Andrew Bridgen.
Mr Bridgen, a Conservative MP, told The Daily Telegraph: “She said it [the introductory monologue] as a statement of fact. There was no pretence of impartiality in any of that report. It was judge, jury and executioner.
“On the programme, it was four against one, and I was the only one she interrupted.”
The BBC Charter requires the corporation “to do all we can to ensure controversial subjects are treated with due impartiality in our news and other output”.
Maitlis’s speech won praise from David Lammy, the Labour MP, as an example of “public service broadcasting”, and by Sir Ed Davey, the acting Lib Dem leader, as “brilliant journalism”.
Maitlis retweeted praise from a viewer who called the monologue “savage brilliance”.
‘There was no pretence of impartiality in any of that report. It was judge, jury and executioner’