The BBC must react more decisively to scandal
JEFF SPICER/GETTY IMAGES
N o one could accuse the British Broadcasting Corporation of being undermanaged. In the year 2023-24 there were 88 senior executives commanding salaries of £178,000 or more, up 21 from 2022-23. Layer upon layer of lavishly remunerated executives, courtesy of the licence payer. All, presumably, capable of spotting potholes in the road; all able to anticipate trouble and deal with it before it becomes an issue. Well, no actually. If there is one thing the BBC can be depended upon to do it is to allow a problem to fester for years without tackling it, or to fail in a basic area of responsibility such as ensuring journalistic neutrality.
The results of this systemic failure were on show on Monday when the national broadcaster released the results of reviews into two scandals. One involved the MasterChef presenter Gregg Wallace, who was found to have subjected programme staff to sexually explicit language over a prolonged period, without obvious challenge from above. The other involved the failure of those overseeing a documentary on Gaza to realise that its child presenter was the son of a Hamas minister. Different situations, but the product of the same neglect.
• Gregg Wallace: I never set out to harm or humiliate
Dame Melanie Dawes, head of the media regulator Ofcom, said at the weekend that the BBC was guilty of 'own goals', explaining: 'What frustrates me and others is that when these things go wrong it can take a long time for the BBC to see that something's happened, when everybody else was there within a matter of hours. So I would say to the BBC: they need to get a grip quicker, get these reports and investigations concluded sooner, otherwise there is a real risk of a sort of loss of confidence in the BBC.'
Dame Melanie is correct. Even when the most serious crimes have been involved the corporation has previously displayed a lamentable lack of curiosity about the off-screen behaviour of its 'talent'. In 2016 Dame Janet Smith, author of a report on the crimes of Jimmy Savile, spoke of a 'climate of fear' at the BBC that prevented staff from speaking out in case it resulted in the loss of their jobs. The organisation, she said, needed to reassess its attitude to big stars. Fear of harming the BBC's reputation trumped concern even about the safety of children. This instinctive corporate circling of the wagons is still the order of the day.
After the BBC's transmission of the Glastonbury act Bob Vylan calling for the deaths of IDF soldiers, Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, asked why no one had been sacked for airing the documentary Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone, giving voice to a narrator linked to Hamas. On Monday, however, Ms Nandy declined to repeat her call for deputy heads to roll, saying the broadcaster had made 'big strides' to ensure that such fiascos could not be repeated. It is true that first-hand reporting from Gaza by news organisations has been blocked by Israel, but that does not allow the BBC to lay most of the blame on the independent production company that made the documentary. It was the duty of BBC bosses to ensure it adhered to the corporation's editorial standards as rigidly as any in-house production.
Ms Nandy may be confident that the BBC has finally got a grip on itself. History is not encouraging, but it must be hoped that this is the case. There is a danger that once the heat has died down, the innate complacency of the BBC bureaucracy will reassert itself. That would only result in more scandal, more obfuscation and more loss of trust.
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