Inside the BBC: What really went on

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I would like to say it has been the privilege of my career to serve as the CEO of BBC News and to work with our brilliant team of journalists. I step down over the weekend because the buck stops with me. But I'd like to make one thing very clear. BBC News is not institutionally biased. That's why it's the world's most trusted news provider. And if you think why did you fail to deal with the mistakes?

Make no mistake, there are shots being fired there by Deborah Tennessee, the outgoing head of BBC News. Is she suggesting that forces within the BBC itself were trying to undermine the editorial impartiality of the job she and journalists were trying to do. We've seen the departure of her and the Director General. The headline is It was all down to Donald Trump and the editing of a panorama clip.

But there is much, much more that is dark and murky about what has gone on. Welcome to the newsagents. The news agents. It's John. It's Emily. And it's Lewis. And we are in the extraordinary position this Monday afternoon of a president of the United States. Claiming credit. for the resignation of the boss, the director general of the BBC and the head of news of the BBC. A foreign power, a foreign head of government, basically saying he got them sacked or forced their resignation.

This is what Donald Trump put on Truth Social last night following the resignations of Tim Davey, the Director General of the BBC for some five years, and Deborah Turness, the head of news. The top people, the president said in the BBC, including Tim Davey, the boss. them are all quitting fired because they were caught quotes doctoring my very good, perfect speech of january sixth.

Thank you to the Telegraph for exposing these corrupt journalists. These are very dishonest people who tried to step on the scales of a presidential election. And indeed it is not just of course Donald Trump in a sense claiming credit for this, it is this curious, bizarre, potentially quite sinister alliance between the presidents and

Boris Johnson, the former Prime Minister who called for Tim Davy to go, and the Daily Telegraph itself. It is a head spinning set of developments. Look, why don't we just listen to what it was that Donald Trump said on january the sixth? This is unedited. We're gonna walk down to the Capitol and we're gonna cheer on our brave senators and Men and women. And this is how Panorama presented it. Capital. And we fight. We fight like hell. The telegraph story broke a week ago.

And it has taken literally until now, this moment, for the BBC to respond. And finally, Samir Shah, the chairman of the BBC, his letter has been published To the Media Select Committee which says The conclusion of our deliberation is that we accept that the way the speech was edited. Did give the impression of a direct call for violent action, the BBC would like to apologise for that error of judgment. And that's been sent to the Select Committee Chair Caroline Dynick.

And you wonder, given that two bits of Trump speech from january the sixth w weren't contiguous but were nearly an hour apart, were put together and this was exposed on Monday night. Why has it taken the BBC a week to say, oops, we got that wrong? And bizarrely, the impression as you say, Lewis, creative.

is responsible for the downfall of the Director General of the BBC. Actually, as I think we'll unpack in this episode, it's more complicated than that and speaks to dysfunction at the heart of the BBC between two different sections who were at war with each other, with news not wanting to give ground.

And uh the board of the BBC saying there is something systematically wrong with impartiality at the BBC. And those two butted heads and it's resulted in this explosion which has left the BBC leaderless.

And arguably rudderless right now. Yeah. This story broke in the telegraph on Monday night last week. We were together. And we understand now that the following morning, Deborah Turness who was the head of news at the BBC, was very keen to address this head on. She attended a board meeting. She wanted to go ahead with an apology to explain the edits in the panorama. And I was told that she was prevented from doing that. She was blocked. by parts of the board, including, I understand, the chair.

And he had made clear when I said what reason I don't understand what reason she was given. he made clear there was a letter going to the DCMS. And the point I was told was that she had been very keen on transparency, she has championed that, and it didn't happen. She wanted to address this back on Tuesday and that didn't happen. What I would do is try and put this particular error, mistake, whatever you want to call it, in a bit of perspective.

Because the panorama went out last on November the second of twenty twenty four. In other words, three days before the US presidential election. It had been played three times, I think. The press office at the time had a handful of complaints, none of them about the edit. And if you ask the B B C they'll say, Look, you know, we put our hands up

it was a mistake. It's very, very easy just to put in something that shows one part of the speech comes early and the the next part of the speech comes later by putting a wipe or a flash or a time code. It is a mistake But I think to then come back and say this materially misled viewers is a massive overstatement because by the time that clip was played, set to music, as part of a montage, the speech was nearly four years old. Trump made that speech.

On january the sixth of twenty twenty one, most people would have heard it, most people would have made their minds up about it by November of twenty twenty four. And indeed Trump's own election denialism had already been a major part of the impeachment process against him, backed by Seven Republicans of his own party. And there was testimony from many people at the time who said it was his words that encouraged us to go down. So

I am not sure if it's a big thing. Okay, m my point is that when Michael Prescott who is the external advisor who had been advising the BBC on impartiality, wrote his dossier, which we now know was leaked to the Daily Telegraph, and in it he said The programme materially misled viewers. I think you have to step back. I think you have to really step back. And actually, I've read that dossier in full now.

And it is not very obvious that he is an independent, impartial advisor. Okay, let me just push back slightly on one or two of those things.'Cause you know, for four years I covered the Trump first term as the BBC's North America editor, and we had an absolute motto our guiding light was. Be very careful and then be very bold. So when you've got firm judgments to make, make them, but do them on the f on the most solid of foundations. You do not edit two different clips together.

Now why didn't the BBC apologize last week for it? And that's the fascinating bit of politics that's gone on here. I also I mean, it's amazing how many people uh in the BBC wanna get their version of events across and you and I have both had numerous conversations.

There is a benign explanation that Samir Shah, the chairman, felt his first duty was to write to the DCMS chair. If that's true, what a miscalculation. It was obvious that Trump was gonna seize on it and Caroline Levitt, the White House spokesperson, would leap on it. And sure enough they have. The more sinister explanation and this is I think gets to the heart of where the B B C is now is that this was a battle. between those on the board and we can start talking about who those people are.

who wanted more than just an apology, a whoopsie daisy, that was a bad edit, but who wanted a sort of surrender document. They wanted to say, We've made a mistake here and we do have a problem with impartiality in the BBC structurally. And that is something that BBC News bosses absolutely flatly reject.

including Deborah Tennessee this morning when she was walking into the building for perhaps her last time. Yeah, and we should talk about uh some of the sort of internal criminology of what's been going on on the board because it is relevant. on that, right? Because this does go to the heart of it. This idea of sort of institutional bias against Trump in this case, although as Emily says, that memo is actually far more that dossier um is actually sort of far more wide-ranged.

I feel like I've been living in a parallel universe for the last twenty-four hours. The hysteria over this story, whipped up by commercial organizations, newspapers, MAGA, the rest of it, the sort of hard right online ecosystem that we talk about all the time. All that have an agenda is something to behold. That edit in question, John, you're right, it was a mistake. It was Clearly misjudged, but the idea that it is somehow a symbol of an institutional bias against Trump, or unfair to Trump.

is an example of institutional bias against Trump is absurd. Yes, it was unfair to Trump because it suggests that in that moment he said something he did not. But how much does that matter? You know, can anyone credibly claim, right? that the overall subject of that documentary was not based in truth and fact. One, Trump lied about the outcome of the twenty twenty election. He continues to lie about it to this day. And Trump did incite the mob on January the sixth.

In the testimony of all of the people who were arrested and sent to prison because of that, many of them said the only reason they did what they did was because of what Trump said, right? Yet if you listen to all of this, the conclusion that you would come to is that the sin of that day is a ten second bloody edit on a BBC programme. We have the tragic comic. absurdity of a former British Prime Minister willing to admonish

his national broadcaster and demand the resignation of the Director General in the name of Donald Trump's reputation for truth telling. And you know what? It goes beyond that, because to me this is a parable. win because basically they get away with it because no one expects anything from them. No one expects them to be truthful.

Everyone expects them to lie and yet we expect everything and we expect almost no mistakes or problems from the people and places and institutions who actually give a damn. And that is why we're in this problem. But then you get to what's going on within the BBC itself. And bear with us if we just try and explain a bit of the cast of characters that were involved. I've talked about how there was a battle between the news executives

And the non-execs who sit on the board, and there's this committee, a subcommittee, on which is a guy called Robbie Gibb. Sir Robbie Gibb, actually. Robbie Gibb at various times has been my boss. has worked Emily's worked with, Lewis has worked with. He was a news person. He was head of political programmes at Westminster. He then goes across to be Theresa May's spin doctor, and so he's working for the Conservative Party.

And he is knighted for his services, political services, and Boris Johnson appoints him to the board of the BBC. So you have a poacher turn gamekeeper turn poacher. And Robbie has an agenda. He's very effective, he's very organised, he is meticulous, and on this committee he argues that what we need is a researcher for the committee. And he appoints this guy from Newsnight called David Grossman.

And David, as far as I know and anyone else knows, there was no board, there was no interview process. He was appointed directly. He was a mate of Robbie's and he did a lot of the research work. Where he would be asked to investigate complaints about BBC coverage. But the complaints he was always asked to investigate. were of left wing bias, never right wing bias, of being anti Israel

but never anti Palestinian cause, of being anti Trump, but never of being pro Trump. And so the senior executives in News would go to these meetings And would feel that the board itself had become so politicized by Robbie Gibbs That they had nowhere to go but to defend themselves. And ultimately, I think Deborah Tennessee's resignation is not about the failure of that edit. is because she would not accept their edict, their viewpoint That the B B C

board had become politicized and she wanted nothing to do with the politicization of BBC News. Yeah. I mean the oldest journalistic question in the world is Kui Bono, who profits? Which is not a bad place I think start trying to analyse

what is going on here. There has definitely been pressure felt In the BBC newsrooms by the presence of Robbie Gibb on the board, in terms of the kind of news that they were able to tell, the kind of stories they were able to prioritize. And when Michael Prescott was pulled in as this external editor, it just so happened that he shared many of the world viewpoints of both Robbie Gibb and we now understand David Grossman. Now maybe that was a coincidence.

Robbie Gibb was on the panel that elected him, that brought him in to do his job as as the independent advisor. But if you go through this dossier that he has written It is really quite extraordinary the stuff that he has singled out. He has a problem with the BBC using the phrase reproductive rights to talk about abortion in the US.

He goes to the group History Reclaimed for his history, an independent group of scholars. Those are historians who push back on the research into British imperialism and slavery. He talks about an over-emphasis. on Trump's eating the pets of Springfield, Ohio, why was the BBC getting itself tangled up about this?

And he picks up a couple I'm just gonna read you a couple of things which are really quite extraordinary. He says there was an overall tendency back to the panorama to frame issues in a way that was similar to the Harris campaign, less fact checky of questionable statements. Words used by the Harris campaign were also echoed in some BBC coverage, such as referring to Trump supporters as election deniers.

The phrase baseless was also used to describe some of Trump's contested claims, but never in association with questionable claims made by his opponents. In other words, He doesn't even like the use of describing Trump as an election denier, or those who supported him as election deniers. So where is he coming from? We are treating this man like he's an arbiter of neutral reporting. He isn't.

It is completely fine to have that viewpoint. It is completely fine to put that viewpoint into the mix and say, ooh, should we be looking at that? Should we be pulling in that direction? Should we be looking over here?

But actually the fact that he's written a dossier from his own perspective from his own very singular perspective of what is right and what is wrong, taking it to the BBC board, the BBC Head of News, the BBC management, who've gone, yeah, some of that we're already doing actually, we've already addressed the problems you talk about in BBC Arabic. Some of the stuff we've already put into BBC boss has told me that ninety five percent of the complaints that Prescott raises

have been dealt with publicly. So the B B C Well some of it was already in the annual report. So this idea that you have somebody who comes in As an arbiter of neutral reporting, with his own worldview, which just happens to represent The worldview of very powerful figures on that board, like Robbie Gibb, who don't forget, used to work for Theresa May. He was a spin doctor in Downing Street.

He was part of a consortium that bought the Jewish Chronicle. We still don't know who the owners of the Jewish Chronicle are, but it is reported that Robbie Gibb was behind the consortium that bought it. And yet Robbie Gibb is called the impartiality czar of the BBC. He's meant to be a sort of ballast to whatever is the left-wing pull. Now

That doesn't make sense. How can somebody with so much political baggage, with so much commercial and political baggage, he also was one of the original founders of GB News. call themselves and impartialities are it absol

Absolutely makes a mockery of the whole idea. The thing about this is that I heard Charles Moore, the former editor of the Telegraph on the Today programme this morning, and he made a comment which I think only somebody who had never worked at the BBC in recent years could make. Which was that all of the BBC's bias, all of the pressure internally, only comes from one direction. It only comes from the kind of liberal left.

I think we all know, having worked there, that that is not the case. When I worked there, I felt completely the opposite, in the sense that partly because Robbie Gibb was there and because I had been told that he was sort of observing what I was doing and and so on. I felt that there was a a very, very strong awareness, a constant pressure.

To be checking potential liberal left biases and very, very few coming from the other direction. Let's be frank, let's be honest. Is anyone at New Broadcasting House sat there thinking, oh, I really worry what Zach Polansky is going to say about this? I'm really worried what the Green Party is gonna say about this. I'm really worried even about what the Labour Party is gonna say about this. No, because all of the political pressure comes from one direction. And in fairness,

That is kind of, you know, that is up to them. Those political forces have the right to do that. What they do not have the right to do, or what some people do not have the right to do, is express that pressure from within in an improper way. It is all very well having pressure from the outside, but having people from within, like Robbie Gibb or like David Grossman, doing what they do in the name, as you say, Emily, of impartiality is Kafka-esque. And just in terms of

kind of this idea of of kind of all complaints coming from one direction from Gibb and Grossman. That completely accords, I have to say, with my own experience. I mean I've talked on the show before about the problems I had with Robbie Gibb. I mean I I've never really said before, but it is true.

that I had problems which were truly bizarre with David Grossman. I mean at one point when I was at News Night, never spoke to me about it, but just decided to go to BBC bosses and had basically drawn up a dossier of things going through my back catalogue, going through the archives, trying to find anything, everything that he could critique me with, attack me with, and so on. This was a very, very unpleasant process.

It ended up basically being referred up to something called the editorial complaints unit. They said this was highly, highly unusual. That you normally arbitrate with complaints from the outside, not from within. Look, I uh at the weekend On Saturday I was with this guy, senior in the BBC, very calm, who says to me, You've got to understand there is a coup taking place right now in the BBC, an attempted coup.

And I put it on our group chat saying, I've just met uh been with this guy who's so there's an attempted coup, which I thought was, you know, completely over the top. And last night we saw the resignation of the Director General and the head of BBC News. There was a coup going on and what you've just described about David Grossman

Is shocking and not shocking simultaneously. Frankly If I was going to be appointed a new director general or the new head of news, I would say, okay, if there is going to be a research. It has to happen without Robbie Gibb in position, where a board has become politicized, and it has to happen without these forces that have led the BBC to tearing itself to shreds.

Over the past week. And why are we talking about it being a coup? Is that completely overblown? We're going to analyze what we've been told after the break. Under rank the wall. Here in Edinburgh. American Week is next. Yeah. or the new LBC app. Leading Britain's conversation.

The news agents. So we've just been using that phrase, the coup, and I have to say, to step back from it, this is not a word that I had used until I think five, possibly six people messaged me saying This is going on. One person was different and they said it's a stitch up. In other words, this is, one person said, the culmination of a plan that has been going on for years.

Now, if you step back and you say, okay, is this just about helping the BBC be a better version of itself? Doesn't everyone want that? Yes, of course, everyone wants that. The trouble is everyone is trying to get the BBC to be a better version of itself. By looking in completely different directions. In other words, Nigel Farage was talking last night after resignation, saying this is the last chance for the BBC, it's gotta stop being so woke and metropolitan. That's where it's going wrong.

Ed Davy from the Lib Dems comes on immediately afterwards and says The problem with the BBC is it keeps platforming people like Nigel Farage and Reform And why can't you call Trump out as a liar and an election denier? This is ridiculous. Why is the BBC being so craven that it's now apologizing to Trump? I mean Trump is the master of fake news.

You don't need to have lived very long to have got your sense of how many times we are lied to by the President of the US. And yet those two opposing views almost meet at the horseshoe of saying something must be done. Now I'm gonna go back to this whole phrase qui bono, because one of the things that I don't think has been talked about enough is how much of a threat. The BBC is to commercial opponents, particularly the website.

The BBC does everything. It does everything with public money. It is the most read, the most sort of enjoyed website pretty much in the world, right? And it operates twenty-four hours a day, operates from Australia and America and Asia and all all over the place. And the papers, frankly, cannot compete. That's the website that the Mail would like to have, the website the Times would like to have, the Telegraph would like to have.

And so they could attack the BBC by saying, Look, this is anti competition, anti trust, you're too dominant, you're using public money to come onto our turf I think they'd have a very good case for saying that. But if you do that, then you just alert the public basically to the fact that they're getting all this stuff. They're getting all the the free stuff they want on the website. And so the way it has been reshaped, the way it's been reworded is

you're being cheated by the BBC. They've got an ideological position and you are not getting the whole truth and the BBC is lying to you. And actually if the papers as one because the papers tend to all criticize the BBC but they don't criticize each other, if the papers as one Carry on telling the British public that they're being lied to, they can't trust the BBC, the BBC is bent, the BBC is ideologically to the left.

Then people start believing it. This is a culmination essentially of the papers feeling very frustrated that they cannot compete commercially with the mammoth uh the megalith is the BBC. Yeah, and look, there's an understandable reason for that in that the BBC gets a guarantee income of you know three and a half billion pounds a year. Three and a half billion. That is a lot of money that the BBC can have and it can have

you know, foreign bureaus around the world in places that you think no newspaper could possibly contemplate having. The BBC has a huge staff, as I know from my time in Washington. So yeah the BBC is huge.

And I think that sometimes the BBC gets accountability wrong. We talked about the coup that took place. Some of the complaints are made by Robbie Gibb and these other people we've spoken about probably have some validity. I mean, you know On the issue of trans, I think the BBC bought into a way of thinking that was promoted by Stonewall, was captured, wouldn't allow other viewpoints to be expressed.

And I think the BBC got that wrong. But I think the BBC is very bad at putting its hand up quickly to mistakes. And I think th if it did that more readily, more quickly, say for example, there was the Gaza documentary where Uh the the son of a Hamas minister was doing a commentary on a daily life. And the BBC have pulled that documentary, they've apologized for it. They've agreed that something egregiously wrong happened. Has her head rolled?

for it? Well not yet. I mean someone is being kinda put out to pasture, slowly a death by a thousand cuts, but no one And so you're gonna get this build up where you think bloody hell the BBC won't take responsibility for things it gets wrong. And it's reached this absurd crescendo. This tragic comedy as Lewis described it, where you end up with the head of news and the director general being forced out.

For the sins that have been committed but not faced up to in the past. And one other thing you say about the newspapers, the Daily Mail, the Daily Telegraph have always been anti BBC, the Times. They've all got their own commercial interests. And the BBC spends far too much time

thinking, how can we please the Daily Mail? You know what guys? You're never going to please the Daily Mail. They're your competitors. They're your competitors. They are hostile to you. And just you BBC, have the self confidence to do your journalism with rigour. With impartiality, with firmness, and don't bend to this criticism. Okay.

Sometimes the BBC actually has to show more spine. Yes, put your hand up when you've got things wrong, but also back your journalists when they're getting things right. You talk about the trans issue. And whether there was capture I think there was a bit of ideological capture, not just in the BBC, but actually in many institutions in public life in Britain. But I remember working at News Night with Esme Wren and Hannah Barnes and Deb Cohen

And we were looking at the question of the Tavistock. This was the only gender identity development services for the under sixteen. and we questioned why it wasn't data led, why it seemed to be so arbitrary with the kind of recommendations and advice and even blockers that they were handing out to young people. And the work we did actually led to the closure of the Tavistock about three years ago.

And I think there is a gap that opens up. When the BBC just self flagellates, when it just goes around with its hair shirt and it's like, Oh we're shit, oh we fucked up, oh we made this mistake, oh we've done it again Actually walk tall, support your journalists and back them and the work they're doing. Most most of the stuff is brilliant. It's incredible. And frankly

When Michael Prescott wrote his kind of ideological to do list, I think it went to senior members of the news team and some of them said, You know what? Actually, we've got this, you know. The Panorama Edit was annoying, it was silly. But they knew about that back in May. They didn't think it was a big problem then. So just choose your position and back it. If you don't think it's a big problem, back it. If you think that there's an issue

Then apologize. Exactly. But on the transition, look, y y the example you gave about the Tavistock, which is this kind of centre in North London, where they were you know, there was this gender identification service and you know, they were giving puberty blockers and all the rest to people who want to transition. And it was an absolute scandal that was exposed. But Newsnight did this amazing journalism and exposed it. And we were terrified.

But no one else in the BBC went near it. It was like it was radioactive and you mustn't touch this box. In the Newsnight office where they have done this work. And I think that that speaks ill of the corporation, that there is brilliant journalism and ooh don't wanna touch it, don't wanna touch it'cause that's not kind of it doesn't

you know, it's an inconvenient truth. And I think that the BBC has got lessons to learn from this. I mean God knows who'd want to be director general now, God knows who'd want to be the director of news right now because it's you know, there is a lot of toxicity And the willingness of people that Emily, you and I both know well, to be on the phone to us. And give their side of it all.

speaks to an organisation that is tearing itself to pieces. Look, I think this is an existential moment for the BBC. And You don't have to be a sort of rocket scientist to work out why. When you hear Nigel Farage saying, I'm not against the BBC but we need a slimmed down version

And he works for G B News. So there is a world in which obviously he'd much prefer G B News to be the number one go to channel. Caroline Levitt, Trump's press secretary, was like, Yay, go G B News, don't watch the BBC, go G B News. There is a world in which Nigel Farage gains political momentum if he's in a position of forming the next government

then what actually happens to the BBC? What happens to the licence fee? Is there a licence fee? Is it a reduced service? Is it like PBS in the US, which kind of, you know, rattles along showing one more documentary a month and then is is sort of put out to pasture? What does it actually mean for the continued existence of the BBC and If you take the commercial interest from the papers

you take the ideological interests of many of those on the right. And it's true, you know, why don't we talk about all the complaints that people on the left have? Because fundamentally more people on the left still broadly believe in a public sector broadcaster than on the right. And so you have all these competing pressures, which may mean that the BBC in its current incarnation isn't very long for this world.

Look, the BBC is a really important global brand, and that doesn't mean it's just because it's famous, it's good. It's famous because it delivers News of a really high quality. Overwhelmingly. I've reported, you know, in my thirty five plus years at the BBC from around the world and you just say those three letters BBC and it does open doors for you invariably. There are people who would love to undermine its importance.

I think this is absolutely agree with you, Emily, this is a existential moment for the corporation. But it is important. You've got to wish it success. It needs to sort itself out and it needs to root out This cancer within the organization. where it's eating away.

uh the morale. And, you know, I can't imagine what it's like for the people doing my old job in Washington today, knowing they are absolutely in Donald Trump's crosshairs and being traduced. I mean the worst that Donald Trump ever called me was a beauty. I'll have that. Now he is absolutely dancing on the BBC's grave right now. Yeah, I mean just to end where we started. You now have the spectacle of the Telegraph thanking Donald Trump for picking up their work and celebrating their journalism.

In what world is Donald Trump an arbiter of impartial, evidence based reality? It is ridiculous. But right now you have the newspapers gleefully celebrating the fact that Donald Trump has given them a big fat tick. We'll be back after the break.

The news agents. We have just rushed back into the studio to bring you the latest breaking news from the BBC. And that is the legal action that Trump has now threatened in a letter to the BBC. So it just gets kind of more.

bizarre by the moment. Donald Trump not enough that he's claiming victory for having led to the downfall of the Director General and the chief executive of BBC News now wants to sue the organisation. I mean we don't know we haven't seen the legal letter, so we don't know whether it's in millions, tens of millions, hundreds of billions, in the billions, because Donald Trump is quite It's got a lot of money really isn't it?

And he has been successful in suing C B S. I mean just to go through it, in the years since he's retaken power he has sued ABC. And A B C has settled. And A B C's settled. He's tried to sue the Wall Street Journal. Haven't settled. He's sued CBS. And they've settled. He has sued New York Times. They haven't seen they haven't settled. They haven't settled. So basically he's worked his way through the sort of major players in the US. And the BBC is now within his

sites. And I guess the question for us really as licensed fee payers at this point is how do we feel about our 180 quid going into Donald Trump's coffers if that's what's gonna happen next. Because it could well happen next. We'll see you tomorrow. Bye bye. Bye for now. This has been a Global Player Original Productions.