BBC Director-General Tim Davie has responded to a question from the UK Government’s Culture, Media and Sport Committee about the incident that erupted after the BAFTA ceremony, in which racial slurs were broadcast even though the broadcast was delayed by two hours.
Unfortunately, in what ended up overshadowing the 2026 awards, Tourette’s activist and inspiration for the film I Swear, John Davidson unintentionally went on a rant, while Sinners stars Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo presented the first awards of the night. The incident sparked a storm of anger, which focused on the BBC’s failure to remove Davidson’s tics from its broadcasts.
In a letter to committee chair Dame Caroline Dinenage, Mr Davey asked for an explanation of the night’s events to explain why the outburst of the N-word was not redacted, insisting it was a “genuine mistake and we take full responsibility for the mistake”.
Mr Davey said the BBC’s “initial evidence gathering” had established that no one watching the live feed on the broadcast truck at the scene had heard Initial. “No editorial decision was made to leave that language in because no one on the broadcast track knew it was on the live feed,” he said.
However, he pointed out that the second abuse occurred when Wunmi Mosaku won the Best Supporting Actress award.
“In that case, our editorial team overheard the racial slur on their feed and immediately removed it from the version of the ceremony that aired later that night. This was in line with the protocols and procedures in place for this event.”
He claimed the mistake occurred when the editorial team began receiving reports of racial slurs “including from BAFTA”. He said: “Our understanding at this time is that the team editing the show in the truck mistakenly believed they had edited out the incident referred to on the basis that they had heard the slur shouted during the Best Supporting Actress award and had edited it. Therefore, when they were informed that the racial slur had been shouted, they believed they had removed it.”
In response to a question about what steps the BBC would take to prevent a similar incident from happening again, Mr Davey confirmed the length of time, understood to be around 15 hours, between the time the BBC became aware the incident had been broadcast and the time the ceremony on the BBC’s iPlayer was removed for editing.
“We are currently investigating further into why we did not recognize the two instances of racial slurs sooner and why we did not take further steps to edit the program after it aired or remove it from iPlayer,” he said. “The BBC will learn lessons from this incident and will ensure that appropriate steps are taken to prevent such incidents from happening again.”
