"We show our impartiality when we report without fear or favour, when we’re not scared to hold power to account, even when it feels uncomfortable to do so."
Former BBC journalist Emily Maitlis says the broadcaster tried to ‘pacify Number 10’ after Downing Street’s complaint about her opening an episode of Newsnight in which she said Dominic Cummings had “broken the rules” with a lockdown trip to Durham and “the country can see that, and it’s shocked the Government cannot”.
Maitlis made the comments during the annual MacTaggart Lecture at the Edinburgh TV Festival. She criticised the BBC’s response to the complaint from Downing Street in which it ruled that impartiality rules had been breached.
She told the audience that the Newsnight introduction had got ‘way more attention’ than it deserved and went on to say: “It was neither the best nor the worst opening we’ve ever done. I say ‘we’, because the scripts were – as always – written, modified, rewritten, edited, and signed off by a team.”
Maitlis said that initially the programme had passed off ‘with a few pleasant texts from BBC editors, and frankly, little else. It was only the next morning that the wheels fell off.’
“A phone call of complaint was made from Downing Street to the BBC News management”, she said.
“This, for context, is not unusual. It wasn’t unusual in the Blair days – far from it; in the Brown days; in the Cameron days. What I’m saying is: it is pretty normal for government spin doctors to vocalise their displeasure with journalists. What was not foreseen was the speed with which the BBC sought to pacify the complainant.
“Within hours, a very public apology was made. The programme was accused of a failure of impartiality. The recording disappeared from the iPlayer, and there were paparazzi outside my front door.”
Maitlis went on to add: “We show our impartiality when we report without fear or favour, when we’re not scared to hold power to account, even when it feels uncomfortable to do so. When we understand that if we’ve covered rule breaking by a Scottish chief medical officer or an English government scientist, then journalistic rigour should be applied to those who make policy within Number Ten.”
She also questioned why the BBC had immediately and publicly sought to confirm the Government spokesman’s opinion, without any kind of due process and said: “It makes no sense for an organisation that is, admirably, famously rigorous about procedure – unless it was perhaps sending a message of reassurance directly to the Government itself?”
Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward
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