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John Reith, the first director-general of the BBC, was not satisfied with his record: “What I was capable of compared with what I’ve achieved is pitiable,” he once complained. Other BBC leaders who came after Reith may have felt the same, given the corporation’s tendency to lose them abruptly.
Tim Davie is the latest, resigning on Sunday amid accusations of left-wing and liberal bias in its news coverage, including the misleading editing of a documentary about Donald Trump. His statement said that he hoped to clear the way for a “sensible, calm and rational public conversation” about the BBC’s future. That is vanishingly unlikely.
Running the BBC has never been easy, and its tussles with governments and other critics reach back at least three decades. But the departure of this director-general, along with head of news Deborah Turness, is deeply damaging. It has occurred just before a crucial government review of the corporation’s funding.
Davie did not have to resign. BBC journalists messed up the programme about President Trump and there were other flaws in its output, but this did not justify such a leadership sacrifice. The editors involved should have corrected errors promptly and faced action if they refused, in line with the broadcaster’s motto “pursue truth with no agenda”.
The fact that he felt the need to leave reveals deep-seated problems with the BBC’s management and the way it has been treated by governments, including this one. These have existed for a long time but the situation is more perilous as the broadcasting industry gets squeezed, both in the UK and globally. Both need to be addressed.
The first problem is that the BBC director-general is both its chief executive and editor-in-chief, responsible for everything from entertainment to news. The range of duties may have been manageable in 1927, when the BBC was first created under Reith, but it is now a burden. Not only is it exhausting for the person in the job but it makes the BBC’s leadership fragile.
Turness was to blame if BBC journalists resisted legitimate criticism of its coverage by Michael Prescott, a former independent adviser to its editorial standards board. Her title was chief executive of news and current affairs, after all. A director-general need not double up and then be expected to resign in any crisis.
The BBC has bigger strategic challenges on which its chief executive needs to focus. Traditional television is in decline as it loses viewers (and advertising, in the case of commercial broadcasters) to streaming companies such as Netflix and online platforms including YouTube. ITV has been so badly affected that it is discussing selling its television business to Sky.
The government will soon launch a green paper on the renewal of the BBC’s royal charter in 2027. This will examine the future of the annual licence fee paid by every household with a television: “Every [home] in the UK has to think it is worth £174.50,” Davie said recently. At this crucial moment, the BBC has lost the executive who was in charge of its response.
This speaks to the BBC’s second problem: overbearing politicians. The controversy has provoked calls for the removal from the board of Sir Robbie Gibb, a non-executive director and former Conservative director of communications. The underlying difficulty is the fact that a succession of governments has gradually encroached on its independence in the guise of raising editorial standards.
Ofcom has been the BBC’s independent regulator since 2017 and strongly criticised one Gaza documentary last month. But this has not stopped government ministers adding their own commentary. Lisa Nandy, culture secretary, condemned a “problem of leadership” at the BBC after it aired footage from Glastonbury of the rap duo Bob Vylan leading chants of “Death to the IDF”.
The BBC is not a state-run broadcaster and would lose much of its value if it became one. The government has a legitimate role in periodically reviewing the existence of the compulsory licence fee but must be careful not to interfere editorially. Nandy was wiser this week to defend the BBC as “a national institution that belongs to us all”, which should retain its independence.
Davie leaves behind a media organisation that still performs creditably, despite its weaknesses. BBC News reaches three quarters of British people weekly and most regard it as accurate and trustworthy. But he was clearly tired of occupying what is now an overstretched role and the BBC should take that seriously. A corporation with 21,000 employees needs a full-time chief executive, not a part-time editor.