It faces urgent questions about how a public service broadcaster should respond to criticism of alleged imbalance on subjects which strongly divide opinion – and which in the case of Israel/Gaza coverage, are core to its reputation as a truth-teller.
The BBC’s management has held a placid view that a centrist Labour government would broadly allow it to continue business-as-usual, with some exploratory and inconclusive talks about life after the license fee.
The coverage of Israel and the war in Gaza is even more damaging in its scope and resonance at home and abroad. The BBC facilitated the commissioning of a documentary on the conflict called Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone, with a 13-year-old child as narrator via a third-party documentary company. The one thing that any cautious observer of coverage in a war zone would note is that, with a sense of massive grievance and selective facts in a story as complex and contemporary as Israel-Gaza, the idea of sourcing a young person’s first-person view is absurdly high risk.
On the other side of the balance sheet, many reporters and advocates of the Palestinian cause fear that an already panicked broadcaster will move further away from seeking to report in depth from the horrors afflicting civilians in Gaza, where information is hard to come by and constrained by Israeli authorities.
The problem here is twofold. For a government that is keen on employment rights and stuffed full of lawyers, it is odd. To demand the “firing” of someone is to wholly end their employment, which requires a high bar of proof of individual dereliction, without ending in a massive legal tussle about org charts and intersections of jobs and blame.
Nandy may well feel strongly on this matter, but she is also fighting for her own job, with a perception that her stint in culture and media is not a natural fit. She thinks the BBC and its boss Tim Davie have a “problem of leadership,” which looks a lot like an attempt to push Davie from office.
square IAN BURRELL The BBC needs to focus on reporting the news - not being it
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At the same time, the BBC clearly needs a wider review on Israel/Gaza coverage and a fresher look overall at who sets, conducts and oversees its news and analysis. My own recipe for change, as someone loyal to and often frustrated by the BBC’s shoulder-shrugging managers and incurious habit of handing out editor posts to an established, insider bunch of favoured people (often reliant on contracts which essentially guarantee a wash-around of the same names to different outlets, rather than opening up its doors) is that it feels too much like a talent “cartel”.
Reviews are plentiful at the BBC when stuff goes awry. Truly energetic challenge to the status quo is much harder to come by and not really welcomed. So if Nandy really wants to promote a rethink that is durable, rather than knee-jerk, she might ask chairman Samir Shah to take a more penetrating look at how to create pluralist organisational remedies.
Anne McElvoy is executive editor at Politico, host of the Politics of Sam and Anne podcast and a frequent BBC presenter
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