In April 2024, Tim Davie — the BBC director general who resigned on Sunday — was dealing with yet another crisis at the U.K.’s national broadcaster. Its top news anchor, Huw Edwards, had just resigned in disgrace following a 10-month suspension after it emerged he had paid a teenager for sexually explicit photographs. What few people aside from Davie knew at the time was that Edwards had been arrested and was facing prison for an unrelated and even more serious offense: accessing photographs of young children being sexually abused. Davie had in fact been informed of Edwards’ arrest six months earlier and yet continued to pay the news anchor’s $631,000 salary throughout Edwards’ suspension and even as he awaited trial. (Edwards, who pleaded guilty, was sentenced to a six month suspended sentence and a sex offender treatment program in Sept. 2024).
Exactly a week after Edwards’ resignation – and with news of his arrest still known only to a handful of senior BBC executives – Davie took time out of his busy schedule to attend a showcase for World Service, the BBC’s international arm, where he gave no hint that anything was amiss. In his speech at the event, held at the BBC’s London headquarters, Davie noted that 2024 was an election year in many countries and that “free and fair reporting has never been more essential.” He also singled out World Service’s BBC Arabic team, who had been given pride of place in the second row directly behind Davie, for special praise. “It’s absolutely fabulous to have you in our presence,” the director general told them.
Looking back, it is perhaps ironic that it was not Edwards – whose arrest sparked an outpouring of fury when it was finally made public three months later – that led to Davie’s downfall, but the BBC’s own “free and fair reporting.” Davie — along with his head of news Deborah Turness – resigned this week following the leak of a damning internal report that revealed one of the broadcaster’s flagship current affairs programs had doctored footage of President Trump’s speech before the Capitol insurrection. The 21-page report, written by Michael Prescott, an advisor to the BBC’s External Guidelines and Standards Board, also raised troubling questions over the impartiality of BBC Arabic, among a host of other issues.
Since taking the top job in September 2020, former marketing executive Davie had earned the nickname “Teflon Tim” for managing to hold on despite crisis after crisis: not only multiple sexual abuse and harassment scandals (as well as Edwards both Russell Brand and former DJ Tim Westwood have been charged with offences during Davie’s tenure while longtime “Masterchef” host Gregg Wallace was fired after being accused of “inappropriate sexual behavior” and is now suing the BBC) but also a number of bullying claims on its most high-profile shows, including “Strictly Come Dancing” (where an investigation has also been launched into “drug use”) and “BBC Breakfast.” It has also endured a number of editorial blow-ups such as broadcasting a Gaza documentary which failed to disclose the narrator was the son of a senior Hamas official, the unfiltered broadcasting of antisemitic rhetoric at Glastonbury and one of its top soccer anchors repeatedly breaching social media guidelines, including sharing an Instagram story about “Zionists” which contained a rat emoji.
Just days after Prescott’s report was leaked to a British newspaper, yet another scandal broke after the broadcaster determined news anchor Maxine Croxall had broken impartiality rules by changing an autocue from “pregnant people” to “women” during a live segment. “It’s crazy that [only] 20 complaints should be upheld,” one BBC News staffer told Variety of the Croxall incident. (By contrast, within ten days of Hamas’ 2023 attacks on Israel, the BBC said it had received 1,500 complaints over its coverage).
By then, however, the writing was already on the wall for Davie. Prescott, a seasoned journalist who had advised the broadcaster for three years before stepping down in June, sent his report to the entire BBC board in September after growing concern about what he described as “serious and systemic problems” within the organization once so trusted it was nicknamed “Auntie.” The most damaging revelation was that current affairs show “Panorama” had seamlessly spliced together two different lines in Trump’s Jan. 6 speech that were uttered 55 minutes apart, significantly altering its meaning (the program was produced by an external production company, October Films Ltd in collaboration with the BBC). Many believe it was the threat of Trump taking legal action that finally prompted Davie to step down. “When the leader of the free world is threatening to sue you for a billion dollars, you can’t really stay,” a current BBC staffer, who requested anonymity, told Variety.
While the Trump edit has undoubtedly made the most noise, Prescott cited what he considered a number of “worrying systemic issues” in the coverage of hot button topics including gender ideology and the Israel-Gaza war, such as platforming an antisemitic contributor (who tweeted Jews are “devils of the hypocrites”) more than 550 times in an 18-month period even after his tweets were brought to editors’ attention. According to The Daily Telegraph, which first revealed the existence of the report, over the past two years BBC Arabic has had to make 215 corrections and clarifications to its reporting of the Israel-Gaza war, amounting to approximately two corrections a week. One example mentioned in the report was a story published days before the World Service showcase, which appeared to accuse Israeli forces of dumping people in mass graves in Gaza’s Al Nasser hospital based on a single Hamas-affiliated source — despite “the same journalists” having reported months earlier that Palestinians were digging those graves for deceased patients. ““BBC News Arabic strives for the highest standards of journalism across its services,” a BBC spokesperson told Variety. “Whenever mistakes are made or clarifications are needed, we take action to ensure clarity and accuracy for our audiences.”
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“Impartiality isn’t that hard: you stick to the facts, don’t take sides, don’t hide stuff and leave your personal beliefs at home,” a current BBC journalist tells Variety while another, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, said there was an invisible culture war within the newsroom. “There is a sort of cancel culture. It’s not overt, but you have to keep quiet,” the second journalist said. Although they had not personally come across any impartiality breaches as “egregious” as the “Panorama” documentary, they described witnessing a gentle massaging of stories to arrive at a pre-determined outcome. “Editors will guide the reporter about how they want a story to be told. Then when the reporters finish their piece, they’ll come and have a look. And if it doesn’t reflect what the output editor wants to reflect, you know, that will be changed.”
Which is why there remains a sense of unease among staff that Davie’s resignation is merely performative and the BBC is still not grappling with the root of the issues raised in the report. “Both [Davie and Turness] managed to resign without admitting really anything,” the second BBC journalist told Variety, adding of the broadcaster: “They’ll do anything to appease Trump.” That could potentially include axing “Panorama” – which was previously embroiled in a historic scandal involving Princess Diana — in an attempt to save the rest of the organization. But Variety understands morale is so low that even staff on other BBC flagship news programs such as Newsnight are pessimistic about their future in the wake of the fallout. (Failures at Newsnight are also mentioned in the Prescott report).
Some BBC journalists are also concerned by the appointment of Jonathan Munro – who is mentioned in the report as defending the “Panorama” documentary edit when it was first brought to his attention – as Turness’s interim replacement. One said Munro “is not the answer to any of these problems” while another described him as being at “the core of what’s wrong with BBC News.” Danny Cohen, the BBC’s former head of television who has been openly critical about the broadcaster’s editorial input, in particular in relation to coverage of the Israel-Gaza war, tells Variety: “The Prescott report is a really serious piece of work and for the BBC to pretend to ignore its findings doesn’t serve the BBC in any way.”
During an all-staff meeting on Tuesday morning, which was broadcast on the BBC’s internal network and which Variety has seen, neither Davie nor BBC chair Samir Shah engaged with the substance of the report nor its criticism of the “Panorama” documentary. Shah backed Davie entirely, calling him “outstanding,” while Davie twice referred to “weaponization” and once to the BBC’s “enemies,” echoing a narrative which has taken hold amongst some swathes of both the newsroom and external supporters that the scandal has been concocted or at least inflamed by right-wing figures hoping to bring down the BBC. When explicitly asked why he’d decided to resign, Davie listed three reasons: the personal toll of the job, the upcoming charter renewal and, “lastly, I think we did make a mistake and there was an editorial breach and I think some responsibility had to be taken.”
A third BBC staffer Variety spoke to, again on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal, described Davie and Shah’s attitude in the meeting as “defensive” and said it had been “quite disappointing” that the former BBC boss hadn’t taken the opportunity to apologize to staff given the turmoil that had ensued. “There’s a real lack of self-awareness there,” said the staffer, who admitted that such is the anger around the BBC’s news coverage he avoids telling people where he works because of the reaction it provokes.
Storytelling consultant and former BBC journalist Dhruti Shah, who worked on “Panorama” among other titles during her time at the broadcaster, acknowledged that the Trump edit amounted to “sloppiness” but is among those concerned that the scandal is being used as a way to attack the BBC. She sees a parallel between many of its scandals, from Trump to Edwards to the mass exodus of women of color exclusively reported by Variety three years ago, as being the products of a broken internal culture in which employees don’t feel able to challenge colleagues and senior staff on issues that have the potential to spiral out of control. In each case opportunities to deal with problems before they became public were missed. “The thing I always say is the BBC is absolutely amazing at reporting on issues and problems happening elsewhere…. it’s not as robust as it could be at challenges within,” she told Variety. “Because really you want to deal with all your problems within, rather than get to a point where they can then be weaponized from those without.”
So far attempts to try and change that culture – most recently with the debut of an internal “Call It Out” campaign to encourage staff to report workplace issues – have fallen flat. A “Call It Out” guide available on the intranet advises: “Resolving concerns early can nip potential issues in the bud[.]” As part of the campaign the BBC spent $80,000 on new mugs, lanyards and pins emblazoned with “Call It Out,” an exercise that one staffer described as “laughable.” “It’s again just a complete lack of self-awareness,” he told Variety. “The leadership thinks that that message can go out when there are so many behaviors that they’re exhibiting which need calling out.”
It remains to be seen whether the next director-general — the leading contenders are former BBC director of television Charlotte Moore and RTÉ boss Kevin Bakhurst — will be able to succeed where Davie did not.
From Variety US