Labour vs the BBC: Do the government want to sack the BBC boss?
Culture secretary Lisa Nandy has said people at the BBC must be held “accountable” for failures in its output, having spoken to newspapers about her problems with the national broadcaster.
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In brief:
- The culture secretary has said BBC staff must be “held accountable” for broadcasting controversial output relating to the Israel/Gaza war.
- A former editor of BBC News tells The News Agents that the BBC needs to “reign in” some of its output, and address some of its “problematic” practices.
- The News Agents say that while it is remarkable to have a senior cabinet member speak to the press about this, the BBC has an easier ride under the Labour government than it did when the Tories were in power.
What’s the story?
Culture secretary Lisa Nandy wants to know why no one has been fired at the BBC over recent failings, demanding that “people must be held accountable”.
It comes after the BBC aired Glastonbury footage of punk band Bob Vylan leading crowds in chants of “death to the IDF” and, in February, pulled a Gaza documentary from BBC iPlayer after it came to light a child featured prominently in the film was the son of a Hamas Minister.
Nandy says she is “exasperated” by the length of time a review into the documentary has taken, with it still ongoing after five months.
“I have been very clear that people must be held accountable for the decisions that were taken. I have asked the question to the board [of the BBC]. Why has nobody been fired?,” she told The Times.
The BBC has said a review into the documentary, Gaza: How to Survive a War Zone, which explored the lives of children living in Gaza, will be published “as soon as possible”.
The review is being led by Peter Johnston, the BBC's director of editorial complaints and reviews, which is independent of BBC News and reports directly to director general Tim Davie.
But when asked whether she has confidence in Tim Davie, Nandy declines to answer.
“I need an adequate explanation from the BBC about what has happened,” she says. “I have not had that from the chair or director-general yet.”
“There is not, in other words, a lot of love between Lisa Nandy personally and Tim Davie, the director general of the BBC,” Emily Maitlis says.
Where has the BBC gone wrong?
“The BBC seems to go from crisis to crisis,” Sir Craig Oliver says.
As the former editor of BBC News and a former Downing Street director of politics & communications, Oliver’s got experience working both sides of the coin.
He says one of the BBC’s problems - and the reason it ends up in such crises - is because it's “looser” than other organisations.
“Anybody who's worked at the BBC knows it's not quite like another organisation. It's not like there's a CEO and a direct line of control,” Oliver says.
“The director general is more like a medieval king, and he's got a series of very powerful barons beneath him that he needs to influence, rather than can directly tell what to do.”
This, he says, means there’s “a tendency for cock ups to happen” - something not helped by how strong the spotlight is on the organisation.
While Oliver believes that Nandy’s frustrations about the BBC are legitimate, he still believes that the BBC has done a “brilliant” job covering the Gaza-Israel war, acknowledging that it is “by a country mile, the most sensitive issue that the BBC deals with.”
“The problem for the BBC has been in more peripheral and fringe things, like Glastonbury,” Oliver believes.
Oliver says one answer to the BBC’s problems would be to reign its content in, be more selective with output and stop thinking it “needs to be a universal offering” - something he admits is easier said than done.
“Any time anybody tries to shut anything down, suddenly there's this huge campaign. Immediately somebody jumps up and goes, ‘we couldn't possibly ever do without BBC Six,” he says.
“Well, we could. The world would not end. The sky would not fall in. But the BBC has a tendency to say, ‘we must have all of this output all of the time’ - and that's problematic.”
What’s The News Agents’ take?
Jon Sopel says it’s clear Nandy is “beyond frustrated” with Tim Davie.
“The fact that Lisa Nandy has chosen to go public on her frustrations is significant in itself. The impression being given is that she doesn't think he's up to the job,” he says.
Emily says that when Labour - or any government - show such force against the BBC, you’re left questioning their motives.
“Are they holding this huge organisation to account, or are they starting to tell it what to do?,” she asks.
“And therein lies the fundamental discrepancy, or queasiness.”
Jon argues the last Tory government did the latter, with Boris Johnson trying “to neuter the BBC by intimidation.”
“He would withhold government ministers from going on programmes if he didn't like the programmes concerned.
“What we didn't have was the, ‘if you don't do this, then that’. With Lisa Nandy, it's almost feeling like ‘if you don't do this, then I'm going to ask for Tim Davey to resign’.”
But, unlike Johnson, Emily points out, this Labour government isn’t threatening the BBC.
“Keir Starmer isn't saying, ‘Oh, I'm not going to come on the BBC and do an interview’, or ‘I'm not going to invite you on my press trips’,” Emily says.
“I think what they have done is keep the editorial and the corporate government lines very separate.
“And for that, I think we should probably be grateful.”