Radio 4’s show When It Hits The Fan features two seasoned crisis managers dissecting how best to deal with corporate disasters. But even its hosts would have their work cut out closer to home at BBC HQ this week.
Lately there has been a seemingly endless roll call of troubles ranging from rising tensions over coverage of the Israel-Gaza crisis, a misfired documentary on the life of a child amid the rubble of the Palestinian authority under Israeli bombardment, the mishandling of Bob Vylan’s antisemitic outburst at Glastonbury and the sacking of MasterChef stars for inappropriate conduct.
Now a fresh round of legal battles with some of its own stars and senior employees is sorely testing how far the Corporation’s top brass respond to unfortunate events – and has unleashed a blame game which will influence its future amid a whirlwind of internal recriminations.
That means that behind the scenes, key characters in the BBC’s internal drama are warily eyeing each other’s prospects – and longevity. Principally Tim Davie, Director General since 2020, Samir Shah, BBC Chair appointed only last March, and Deborah Turness, CEO of BBC News. Publicly, all are keen to support one another.
BBC Director-General Tim Davie answering questions on the BBC Annual Report at the Scottish Parliament in 2025 (Photo: Andrew Milligan/PA Wire)But as the pressure rises on an accident-prone institution, there is what one former board figure calls: “A sense that this could end up as a circular shooting match”. Not least because neither the government in the form of Culture and Media Secretary Lisa Nandy nor Ofcom under Melanie Dawes – which has announced its own inquiry into leadership failures over a contentious drama commissioned in Gaza – seem convinced that the present set of excuses, apologies and fixes will work.
An internal inquiry ruled that the broadcaster breached editorial guidelines by failing to give audiences the “critical information” that the narrator of Gaza: How To Survive A Warzone, was the son of a Hamas minister. Everyone from the Director General downwards expressed regret and promised a reshuffle of responsibilities and oversight to lock the stable door after a fleet of horses had bolted.
A head or two will roll, if not by outright firings, as an irate Nandy demanded when she declared herself “exasperated” by the slowness of the reckonings and lack of an “adequate explanation” of failings from Davie or Shah.
Bobby Vylan of Bob Vylan crowdsurfs at Glastonbury after making anti-IDF comments (Photo: Leon Neal/Getty Images)Actual career executions are rare in the circumstances – not least because, as one employment lawyer involved in defending some of those in the firing line puts it: “A minister in a government which wants to extend employment rights might remember that you can’t summarily have people sacked without due process.”
Instead, it tends to downgrade people for practical errors of omission – and promotes a new group of similar people over their heads, while ensuring the top brass stays intact.
This has not quietened a growing internal revolt over the “deputy heads must roll” mentality. Questions are being asked about where the buck stops – and why it never seems to be at the top.
Certainly those questions are directed at Davie, who has proved himself a water-off-a-duck’s-back survivor through sundry crises in his tenure – and the legacy of many before. Even more so, over the lack of oversight and responses of the powerful head of BBC news and current affairs empire, Deborah Turness, appointed by Davie after a stint at the US NBC network.
Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy arrives at Downing Street (Photo: Peter Nicholls/Getty Images)“It’s (Sherlock) Holmes and Moriarty time around here,” sighs one senior executive who knows both well. “They stand or fall together – and that is part of the problem. The risk factor for people making editorial decisions now feels huge, almost unmanageable – while the liability falls on people whose salaries are not in the multiple hundreds of thousands (Turness is paid a salary of well over £400,000 while the board raised Davie’s remuneration this year to £544,999 – the very top of the BBC pay band).
That was intended as a vote of confidence and Shah has made clear he intends to stick by Davie – at least for now. Some recent board members however think that simply continuing with the present constellation – and a board and news-board set up which gives decision rights to a very limited number of people – isn’t sustainable. “There is not enough external input or thinking about how things could be run differently,” says a former board member. “It’s too closed a milieu and it needs a lot more challenge to the thinking.”
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The tight gene pool who sit on the news-board engineered by Davie and the overall BBC board with very limited external input were steps taken a few years ago to allow for greater agility in decision-making. But a narrowness of experience and viewpoint has crept in – and that is coming back to bite them.
The anxious mood led to an awkward “town hall” video call which Turness hosted in the aftermath of the Gaza film report. But it also went off track with another controversial set of comments about the coverage of Hamas that raised questions about her editorial grip.
Turness sought to defend the documentary (made by an independent company Hoyo Productions, but commissioned and overseen by BBC current affairs), on the basis that the narrator’s father was not a member of the “military wing” of Hamas but a government minister, adding that “externally (it) is often simplified … it is an important point of detail that we need to continually remind people of the difference.”
That analysis landed with a thud, with prominent critics of the BBC’s reporting of the conflict, spearheaded by another high profile ex BBC head of TV, Danny Cohen, who now heads Access Entertainment, a division of Sir Len Blavatnik’s showbusiness empire. He is a persistent critic of what he regards as “institutional blindness to antisemitism” in the BBC’s Israel coverage and has described Turness’s remarks as “ignorant and dangerous and further evidence of why so many British Jews do not feel they can trust the BBC”.
BBC chairman Samir Shah after delivering a speech on the future of UK public service broadcasting at the Leeds Conservatoire ( Photo: Danny Lawson/PA Wire)More broadly, message discipline at the top of the organisation is fraying. As Turness was speaking, Davie had just met with staff concerned about the failure to stop a broadcast livestreaming Bob Vylan’s anti-IDF and anti-semitic comments at Glastonbury last month.
Another head duly rolled sideways – Lorna Clarke, head of music and overall in charge of Glastonbury has “stepped back from day-to-day duties” while the failure to pull the livestream is investigated. Few expect a return to the same role.
Meanwhile the Gaza film fallout has led to the announcement of yet another executive role “which will have strategic leadership of its long form output across the news division”. That would upend existing hierarchies.
And because so much is now on the line, many people involved in the disputes about blame have lawyered up. One of the less attractive aspects of a star with HR and lawyers on speed dial is that many of its own senior people feel obliged to seek legal representation when things go awry. “It’s David against Goliath,” says one who has taken this path. Several prominent employment lawyers are “go-tos” for such matters.
Head of BBC news and current affairs Deborah Turness (Photo: Ray Burniston/ BBC)John Torode, the long-standing star of MasterChef who was summarily dismissed last week for historic use of “an extremely offensive racist term” after an inquiry into the behaviour of his co-star Gregg Wallace, upheld an allegation that Torode had used racist language, is said to be considering legal action about his dismissal from the show.
A senior legal figure who has frequently provided this service for top BBC insiders tells me, “I start by saying to the client: ‘someone is going to lose their job as a result of this, fairly or otherwise – and my role is to ensure it is not you’.”
Where does all this leave the characters at the heart of a drama that would make a public service version of “Succession”? Tim Davie is an affable, self-confident character and former vice president of marketing at Pepsi (unusual in a world where too many senior folk have little to no private sector experience).
He shook up the DG suite by opening up dusty offices and receiving guests wearing jeans and white trainers. Over time, the spontaneity and readiness to engage which were his hallmarks has waned a bit and “Davie speak” as one recipient of pep talks puts it is “a lot of talking points about “trust” and “world-class content” and the success of the i-player platform – “while Rome burns”.
An inquiry into the behaviour of ‘Masterchef’ star Gregg Wallace upheld an allegation that co-star John Torode had used racist language (Photo: BBC/Shine TV)At a party hosted by Sky TV recently, Davie mingled happily with media luminaries including David Rhodes, the Sky News boss and Rebekah Brooks of News UK. He did not look like a man about to fall on his sword – and that is the working assumption. “There’s no way Tim will walk away before the charter renewal ahead of 2027. He will fight on,” says an ally. The charter plans will effectively determine funding options beyond the licence fee to support the national broadcaster’s long-term future.
But stuff happens (a lot at the BBC) and loyalties are going to be tested in the weeks and months ahead. A relatively new chair, Samir Shah still feels like a less than assured entity. A longstanding senior independent TV producer himself, supported for the role under the Tories by ministers who wanted an “anti-woke” candidate, he is gregarious and a tad mercurial in communications – which has made staff nervy about his pronouncements.
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Shah surprised many senior execs by seeming to prejudge the Gaza film review case before a parliamentary select committee by describing the film as a “dagger to the heart” of BBC impartiality. “That is something other people say about you, not what you want the Chair to be saying,” says one infuriated insider.
A fondness for flamboyant language does not always seem to align with a clear sense of what reforms Shah now wants to happen and how to achieve them.
Running a massive and complex news and analysis organisation in times of divided public opinion and financial strain is genuinely hard. But it’s hard to see Turness’s reality continuing without some more root and branch reform. Outside a clique of people who work closely together, there are doubts about priorities and execution – and a sense that the intellectual and analytical muscle in her fiefdom has been neglected.
A view of Broadcasting House in London (Photo: Zeynep Aslim/Anadolu via Getty Images)As one of her colleagues puts it, “There is too much emphasis on new projects like the fact-checking BBC Verify, while we’ve not been great at verifying ourselves – or rigorous enough in distinctive content in some areas.”
The BBC is still at heart a very necessary institution – at home and overseas – with many excellent people working inside its stressed citadel. But the feeling is persistent that there are too many cooks ready to pass the blame with the promised dishes turning into a steaming mess. And the kitchen staff get the blame, while the head chefs carry on regardless with the same prix-fixe menu. It may be a defence mechanism – but it’s too fragile to last.
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