Davie’s authority has been undermined by his handling of Bob Vylan’s Glastonbury set and the refusal to pick up a new documentary on Gaza. But it’s the accumulation of controversies that could be his undoing.The last major enforced resignation of a director-general of the BBC was more than 20 years ago, apart from the 54-day reign of George Entwistle who went in 2012 following false allegations by Newsnight that Lord McAlpine had been involved in a child abuse scandal.The 29th of January 2004 was a dramatic day in the history of the Corporation, with the resignation not just of a popular director-general in the form of Greg Dyke, but also the BBC chairman Gavyn Davies following the publication of the Hutton report.Hutton looked into the circumstances surrounding the death of weapons expert David Kelly and found Dyke’s approach into the checking of news stories as “defective”, in particular an early morning report on the Today programme by Andrew Gilligan, who also resigned.There were tears and BBC staffers marched in support.The resignations came as a result of what was arguably one piece of failed journalism and the response to it.Since then there has been a period of calm, at least by BBC standards — until now.In a very different way, could a similar process be under way that, perhaps will not be as dramatic as the Dyke affair, but that will ultimately undermine the authority of the current director-general Tim Davie?First, congratulations to Channel 4 and its head of news and current affairs Louisa Compton, for deciding to pick up the BBC documentary Gaza: Doctors Under Attack.The documentary was dropped by the BBC, reportedly by Davie himself, because it “risked creating a perception of partiality”.Many will argue it is difficult to remain impartial about the bombing of hospitals, something that has undoubtedly happened.Thanks to Channel 4, we can all watch the programme this evening and judge the merits, or otherwise, of whether the case has been made that doctors and hospitals have been deliberately targeted by the Israel Defence Forces.Compton says the documentary has been vigorously fact-checked and that she is happy that it meets both Channel 4 standards and the broadcasting codes of media regulator Ofcom.If so, it leaves the BBC looking weak, risk averse and unwilling to tackle some of the most difficult issues of the age.Unfortunately for Davie, another much greater scandal than the pulled documentary burst above his head within hours — the live BBC coverage of rapper frontman Bobby Vylan.The coverage was neither stopped nor pulled and we now know that, even though Davie visited the Glastonbury production team soon after the broadcast, it remained for hours on the BBC iPlayer.The only concession to the spreading scandal was that the BBC said it didn’t intend to make the item available on demand.The BBC has admitted that “in retrospect” the broadcast should have been interrupted or coverage moved, as could easily have been done, to another of the many stages available live.It looks as if little if any research was done into the nature of Bob Vylan.The pressure on Davie, as the executive ultimately responsible, rapidly began to mount.Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said: “There’s no excuse for this kind of appalling hate speech. The BBC needs to explain how these scenes came to be broadcast.”Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy made it rather more personal by suggesting the scandal raised “a question of leadership.”Nandy has complained to the BBC about why it took five hours to remove footage of the Bob Vylan set on iPlayer.“I expect answers to these questions without delay,” the Culture Secretary said. “I have made that clear to the BBC leadership. When you have one editorial failure, it’s something that must be gripped. When you have several, it becomes a question of leadership”.The BBC has a time-honoured strategy in dealing with embarrassing scandals — deputy heads shall roll.Sack someone, almost anyone, to protect the top leadership. It’s not clear that such a strategy will work this time.This incident alone could indeed bring down Tim Davie, although it probably won’t.What could bring down a decent man, often falsely accused of being a Conservative placeman, is the accumulation of controversaries handled in a less than perfect manner.On Davie’s watch, Newsnight was gutted of its journalist teams and Stephen Sackur’s HardTalk closed down.As former chief executive of BBC Worldwide, he really should have known better about closing down HardTalk with its huge international reputation.Now we are into blocking documentaries that other responsible public service broadcasters are happy to broadcast, and the Glastonbury debacle.But behind such doubts — and it is quite impossible for any director-general of the BBC to please anyone let alone everyone — there is another worry that must be starting to nag away in the minds of some members of the BBC Board.Davie has been at the BBC for 20 years, and it is true that he once stood as an unsuccessful Conservative candidate for the Hammersmith and Fulham London Borough Council.Because of all of that and the fact that his background is in marketing rather than journalism, is he the right person to lead the BBC into next year’s negotiations with the Labour Government for an all-important new Royal Charter due to begin on 1 January 2028?He might make it, but his current travails could be used as a convenient excuse for the new-ish BBC chairman Dr Samir Shah, appointed last year, to move into those negotiations with his own appointment for director-general.
- The Views on this post is of Raymond Snoddy who is a media consultant.
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