In April 2024, Tim Davie, the BBC director-general who resigned on Sunday, was dealing with yet another crisis at Britain’s national broadcaster. The station’s top news anchor, Huw Edwards, has just resigned in disgrace after being suspended for 10 months after it was revealed he had paid a teenager to take sexually explicit photographs of him. What few people other than Davey knew at the time was that Edwards had been arrested and jailed on an unrelated and more serious charge of accessing photos of young children being sexually abused. In fact, Davie was informed of Edwards’ arrest six months in advance, but continued to pay the news anchor his $631,000 salary while Edwards was suspended and awaiting trial. (Mr. Edwards, who pleaded guilty, was sentenced to a six-month suspended sentence and a sex offender treatment program in September 2024).
Just a week after Mr Edwards resigned, and news of his arrest was still only known to a small number of BBC executives, Mr Davie took time out of his busy schedule to attend a showcase for the BBC’s international division, the World Service, where he gave no hint that anything was amiss. Speaking at an event at the BBC’s London headquarters, Mr Davie said 2024 was an election year in many countries and “a free and fair press is more important than ever”. He also singled out the World Service’s BBC Arabic team, who were given pride of place in the second row just behind Davie, as special praise. “It is truly wonderful to have you all before us,” the Director-General told them.
In retrospect, it may be ironic that it was not Edwards but the BBC’s own “free and fair reporting” that caused Davie’s downfall. Davey, along with news director Deborah Turness, resigned this week after a damning internal report was leaked revealing that one of the station’s flagship current affairs programs doctored footage of President Trump’s speech before the storming of the Capitol. The 21-page report, written by Michael Prescott, an adviser to the BBC’s external guidelines and standards committee, raised troubling questions about the impartiality of BBC Arabic, among many other issues.
Since taking the top job in September 2020, former marketing chief Davey has earned the nickname “Teflon Tim” for managing to hold on despite repeated crises. As well as multiple sexual abuse and harassment scandals (like Edwards, Russell Brand and former DJ Tim Westwood have also been charged with crimes during Davey’s tenure, while long-time MasterChef host Gregg Wallace was sacked after being accused of “inappropriate sexual conduct” and is now suing the BBC), as well as “Strictly Come Dancing” (an investigation has also been launched into “drug use”) and the BBC There have been numerous allegations of bullying even on the most popular shows such as “Breakfast”. It has also endured a number of editorial blunders, including the broadcast of a Gaza documentary that failed to reveal that the narrator was the son of a senior Hamas official, the unfiltered broadcast of anti-Semitic rhetoric at Glastonbury, and repeated violations of social media guidelines, such as one of Gaza’s top soccer anchors sharing an Instagram story about “Zionists” that included a rat emoji.
Days after Prescott’s report was leaked to a British newspaper, yet another scandal broke after the station ruled that news anchor Maxine Croxall had breached impartiality rules by changing her autocue from “pregnant woman” to “woman” during a live broadcast. “It’s strange that only 20 charges were upheld,” one BBC News staff member told Variety about the Croxall case. (By contrast, within 10 days of Hamas’s 2023 attack on Israel, the BBC announced it had received 1,500 complaints about its coverage).
But by that time, Davie’s writing was already on the wall. Ms Prescott, an experienced journalist who advised the broadcaster for three years before resigning in June, sent a report to the full BBC board in September after growing concerns about what she described as “serious systemic problems” within the organization, where she was once nicknamed “Aunt.” The most damaging revelation was that the current affairs program Panorama seamlessly spliced together two different lines uttered 55 minutes apart in President Trump’s January 6 speech, drastically changing their meaning (the program was produced by external production company October Films in collaboration with the BBC). Many believe it was Trump’s threat of legal action that ultimately led to Davie’s resignation. “You can’t stay there when the leader of the free world is threatening to sue you for $1 billion,” a current BBC employee told Variety on condition of anonymity.
While Trump’s edits were arguably the most controversial, Prescott cited a number of what he considers “alarming systemic issues” in reporting on hot topics such as gender ideology and the Israel-Gaza war, including platforming anti-Semitic contributors (who tweeted that Jews are “the devil of hypocrites”) more than 550 times in the 18 months after his tweets came to the editor’s attention. The Daily Telegraph, which first revealed the existence of the report, said BBC Arabic had to make 215 corrections and clarifications to its reporting on the Israel-Gaza war over the past two years, which equates to about two corrections a week. One example mentioned in the report is an article published a few days before the World Service showcase that, based on information from a Hamas-affiliated source, appeared to accuse the Israeli military of dumping people in mass graves at al-Nasser hospital in Gaza – even though “the same journalist” had reported months earlier that Palestinians were digging graves for dead patients.
“Impartiality isn’t that difficult. It’s about sticking to the facts, not taking sides, not hiding things, and keeping your personal beliefs to yourself,” one current BBC journalist told Variety, while another reporter, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, said there was an invisible culture war going on within newsrooms. “There’s a kind of cancel culture. It’s not overt, but you have to be silent,” said the second journalist. They said they had not personally encountered impartiality violations as “egregious” as the documentary “Panorama,” but they had witnessed stories being gently massaged to arrive at a predetermined outcome. “The editors coach the reporters on how they want the story to be told. Then, when the reporters have finished writing their stories, they come over to look at it. And if the output editors don’t reflect what they want it to reflect, it gets changed.”
So there remains a sense of unease among staff that Mr Davie’s resignation is merely an act and that the BBC has yet to address the root of the issues raised in the report. A second BBC reporter told Variety: “Both[Davie and Turness]succeeded in resigning without actually admitting anything,” adding: “They will do whatever it takes to appease Trump.” That could include scrapping Panorama, which was previously embroiled in a historic scandal involving Princess Diana, to save the rest of the organization. However, Variety understands that morale has fallen to such an extent that even staff at the BBC’s other flagship news programmes, such as Newsnight, are feeling pessimistic about their future in the wake of the crisis. (The Newsnight fiasco is also mentioned in the Prescott report).
Some BBC journalists are also concerned about the appointment of Jonathan Munro (mentioned in the report as having championed the Panorama documentary editing when it first came to prominence) as Mr Turnes’ interim replacement. One said Munro was “not the solution to any of these problems”, while another said he was at the “heart of what is wrong with BBC News”. Danny Cohen, the BBC’s former director of television, who has publicly criticized the broadcaster’s editorial opinion, particularly regarding its coverage of the Israel-Gaza war, told Variety magazine: “The Prescott Report is a very serious undertaking and it is not in the BBC’s interest in any way for the BBC to pretend to ignore its findings.”
Tuesday morning’s all-staff meeting was broadcast on the BBC’s internal network and was also viewed by Variety, but neither Mr Davie nor BBC chairman Sameer Shah weighed in on the content of the report or criticism of the documentary Panorama. Mr Shah gave Mr Davie his full support, calling him an “outstanding man”, while Mr Davie twice referred to “weaponisation” and once to the BBC’s “enemies”, echoing the prevailing narrative among some in the press and external supporters that the scandal was fabricated, or at least incited, by right-wing figures bent on overthrowing the BBC. When asked specifically why he decided to resign, Davey cited three reasons: the personal strain of the job, the impending charter renewal, and “Finally, I think we made a mistake and there was an editorial breach and I think there should be some accountability.”
A third BBC staffer interviewed by Variety, again speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, described Mr Davie’s behavior at the meeting with Mr Shah as “self-protective” and said it was “deeply disappointing” that the former head of the BBC had not taken the opportunity to apologize to staff given the turmoil that ensued. “There’s a real lack of awareness,” the staffer said, admitting that anger over the BBC report was anger at people avoiding telling people where they work because of the reaction it provoked.
Dolti Shah, a storytelling consultant and former BBC journalist who worked on titles such as Panorama during her time at the broadcaster, admitted Trump’s editing was “sloppy” but is among those who fear the scandal is being used as a means to attack the BBC. She sees similarities in many of the company’s scandals, from Mr. Trump to Mr. Edwards to the mass exodus of women of color that Variety exclusively reported on three years ago, and sees many of the company’s scandals as the product of a broken culture in which employees are unable to challenge colleagues and senior staff on issues that could spiral out of control. In both cases, there was a missed opportunity to address the problem before it became public. “What I always say is that the BBC is really great at reporting on issues and problems that are happening elsewhere…they’re not as robust against internal challenges,” she told Variety. “Because you actually want to handle all your problems internally, and not have them become weaponized by outsiders.”
So far, attempts to change that culture have failed, including the recent launch of an internal “Call It Out” campaign to encourage employees to report workplace issues. The Call It Out guide, available on the intranet, advises: ‘By addressing concerns early, we can nip potential problems in the bud.’ As part of the campaign, the BBC spent $80,000 on new mugs, lanyards and pins with ‘Call It Out’ written on them, which one staff member described as ‘laughable’. “It’s also a complete lack of self-awareness,” he told Variety. “Leaders believe that if the behaviors they are exhibiting are so high that they need attention, that message could be sent.”
It remains to be seen whether the next director-general – the leading candidates being former BBC television director Charlotte Moore and RTÉ boss Kevin Bakhurst – will be able to achieve the success that Mr Davie was unable to achieve.
The BBC did not respond to Variety’s inquiries by press time.
