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The fallout over the shock resignation of the beleaguered head of the BBC Tim Davie (who has faced a string of scandals) continues, with all but one of the UK newspapers today leading on the extraordinary controversy, highlighting how The Eye have been calling for him to go for months.
Last night we reported the astonishing information, and the reaction has been incredible to the announcement that both he and the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of News Deborah Turness have both resigned.
It puts centre stage the REFUSAL by executives to answer The Eye’s questions about the unbelievable scandals that have engulfed the giant broadcaster.
The high-profile departures came amid criticism that a BBC Panorama (where our Editor, Welshman Phil Parry has worked) programme misled viewers by editing a speech by US President Donald Trump.
Ms Turness has rejected institutional bias and says journalists “aren’t corrupt”, proclaiming that BBC journalists are “hardworking people”, althoughOne media outlet described Mr Davie as “Teflon Tim”, while another declared that he had been “crocked”.
MPs too have been highly critical. The Chair of the Culture, Media and Sport (CMS) committee Dame Caroline Dinenage, who says she is expecting a letter of apology from the BBC Chair Samir Shah today, but that it has not yet arrived, said last night’s resignations were “avoidable”.
She said: “…there is no escaping the fact he (Tim Davie) was very slow to act on this particular issue”.
The BBC reported: “This is seismic. To lose both the director general and the CEO of BBC News at the same time is unprecedented. It’s an extraordinary moment in the history of the BBC”.
The Guardian published: ‘In an announcement that caused shock within the corporation, Davie said his departure was “entirely my decision” and it comes as the BBC prepares to apologise for the way it edited a Trump speech’.
The Daily Mail stated: “…the scandal-hit broadcaster was this week plunged into a fresh crisis after an internal dossier exposed a string of incidents that demonstrate serious apparent bias in the Corporation’s reporting”.
Huge condemnation of the corporation has hit social media too, with one critic saying there was pro-nationalist party Plaid Cymru (Plaid) bias to be addressed in BBC Cymru Wales (BBC CW).
The Daily Telegraph first broke the story of bias, but the BBC (where Phil was for 23 years) seemed unable to get on the front foot in the face of a deluge of damaging headlines about claims that it was systemic.
It appears there has been a rift between the BBC board and the news division with some arguing the corporation has, for too long, failed to address institutional bias. and others questioning whether what’s unfolded has been an orchestrated – and politicised – campaign against the organisation which has claimed two big scalps.
The BBC allowed the story to fester – and the White House has called a scene in the programme at the heart of it all “fake news”.
The US president himself also weighed into the debate saying in a post on his Truth Social platform, that he celebrated the resignations and accused the BBC of “doctoring” his speech as well as of “trying to step on the scales of a presidential election”.
At a board meeting on Thursday to discuss the growing crisis Ms Turness was apparently “ripped apart“.
The background to the shock announcement yesterday is extraordinary, because former Prime Minister (PM) Boris Johnson had unleashed a furious tirade against the BBC, in which he had also slammed two veteran presenters, while demanding the Director General (DG)’s resignation.
The huge broadcaster had been accused of selectively editing a speech by President Trump to make it appear clearer that he had encouraged the US Capitol attack, according to a former external adviser to the corporation.
An edition of Panorama, broadcast a week before the US election, spliced together clips of a speech by him made on January 6 2021, which suggested that he told the crowd: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be there with you, and we fight. We fight like hell”.
Worries have been raised in the past, too, about the corporation’s impartiality, despite Mr Davie declaring in Cardiff soon after his appointment: “If you want to be an opinionated columnist or partisan campaigner on social media then that is a valid choice, but you should not be working at the BBC”.
BBC rules underline this, and announce that staff should also avoid using disclaimers such as ‘My views, not the BBC’s’ in their biographies and profiles, as they provide no defence against personal expressions of opinion.
It seems, though, that taking disciplinary action earlier against him was tempered by the knowledge that there were few alternatives, but the decision has now been taken out of the hands of senior officials
Details of what has happened alarm Phil, and Mr Davie’s position had long appeared untenable.
After all the earlier scandals (even before Mr Davie’s revelation that he was finally quitting), it had seemed reasonable to ask the BBC about them.
This is the (extremely polite) request Phil put to their Media Office (MO) on December 19, and he was encouraged because on the BBC’s website it is declared: “Enquiries from journalists will be responded to as quickly as possible”.
Hello.
I am Editor of a news website called The Eye.
Could you please answer the following questions:
1. In the light of the Gregg Wallace, and other affairs, what, if any, programmes are now not to be transmitted, and how many of them are there?
2. What, if any, changes have been made to your Whistleblowers’ Charter, and what are the dates of these?
3. What, if any, changes have been made to your safeguarding policies, and what are the dates of these?
Statements can be made by return to this address – it is checked constantly and is totally secure.
Thank you,
Phil Parry
To date, though, there has been NO reply apart from two automated messages saying that the requests had been received.
Perhaps these questions are too difficult to answer when your boss has quit, and the storm about it is in all the papers today.
The memories of Welshman Phil’s astonishing decades long award-winning career in journalism (including his years at the BBC), as he was gripped by the rare neurological disabling condition Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP), have been released in the book ‘A Good Story’. Order it now.
Tomorrow – how as aerospace industries win out, huge investment is underway in cleaner, greener, aircraft, and Wales could benefit.
