How a butterfly flapping its wings led to a tornado at the BBC
Opinion
Who should be the next director-general of the BBC? How about someone with proven experience of successfully fighting for a channel’s survival, suggests Ray Snoddy.
The current crisis at the BBC is the media equivalent of the butterfly metaphor from chaos theory – that in complex systems, a butterfly flapping its wings can eventually lead to a tornado.
In this case, the butterfly flapping its wings was a few seconds of poorly edited speech in a Trump documentary. It was made for Panorama by independent producer October Films.
That led to a memo from former Sunday Times journalist Michael Prescott, who was an independent advisor to BBC News.
The memo, among other complaints about BBC coverage of Gaza and trans rights, pointed out that two different parts of a Trump January 6th speech had been spliced together to make the US President appear marginally more belligerent than he actually had been.
The allegation was looked at a couple of times, and in the time-honoured tradition of the BBC, nothing was done, and they hoped it would all go away.
Then the inevitable happened. The memo was leaked by persons unknown, although suspicions abound, to the Daily Telegraph, and the butterfly wings grew more and more powerful.
The pre-ordained script runs true as the BBC Board squabbles with news executives, and when prompt action was needed, nothing was agreed or done for a week, as a bleak wind strengthened.
Unusually for the BBC, deputy heads did not roll. This time, it was the top brass who resigned, director-general Tim Davie and chief executive of BBC News, Deborah Turness .
Cue all the BBC’s many enemies, stirred up by the right-wing press, calling for the Corporation’s wings to be clipped, or cut off entirely and, naturally, for the end of the licence fee.
Even that paragon of editorial virtue, the shameless Reform-supporting Kelvin MacKenzie of Hillsborough fame, is trotted out to denounce BBC journalism.
Just when you think things could hardly get worse, up pops everyone’s worst nightmare, Donald J Trump, with the threat of a $1bn lawsuit unless the BBC apologises, retracts the Panorama edition and pays “appropriate” compensation by Friday.
It all adds up to an existential crisis for the world’s leading public service broadcaster and certainly a tornado from butterfly wings.
How could it have happened? A young, inexperienced Indy editor?
Not according to The Times, which reported yesterday (Tues) that the programme had been edited by the boss of Panorama, the highly experienced Karen Wightman, who has a reputation for meticulous editing.
She has not publicly explained her thinking. The usual pressure on time and the fact that Trump’s overall approach had not been misrepresented perhaps? After all, over 70 minutes on January 6, Trump used words such as “fight,” “fighters”, or “fighting” 20 times in interviews, and there was that impeachment vote against him in the US Senate because of his behaviour that day.
But you cannot ever elide and connect two different passages of speech from anyone, least of all the President of the United States.
What happens next? First things first. The Friday Trump deadline
The BBC has already apologised and withdrawn the programme. But under no circumstances should the Corporation behave like the craven US broadcasters and hand over Danegeld to Trump.
There would be a sort of redemption for the BBC in fully admitting mistakes made, but no more, and it should be fighting back against Trump’s generalised smears.
Under the First Amendment, which protects freedom of the press in America, honest mistakes are protected, and actual malice must be proved for defamation to stick.
There is absolutely no evidence of malice, and Trump may even find it difficult to persuade courts in Florida to take the case on the grounds that no one saw the programme.
It was not broadcast on the BBC’s international channels, and the iPlayer is only available in the UK.
If Trump tries the English legal system, he might find judges take a dim view of such blatant libel tourism.
It is time to establish a wholly independent editorial advisory committee composed of senior journalists from outside the Corporation. That would get rid of part of the Sir Robbie Gibb problem. It would, however, be better if the divisive figure, who helped set up GB News and was Theresa May’s director of communications, resigned or was removed from the BBC Board entirely.
He has been accused of many things, not least a public attack on the impartiality of BBC journalist Lewis Goodall, who now no longer works for the BBC.
Over time, when BBC board vacancies occur, the Government should appoint board members with some knowledge of broadcasting and the media.
Neither Davie nor Turness should have resigned over this particular issue.
Davie was not a bad DG, although, because of his career background, he suffered from a lack of editorial instincts, and he could have done much more in public to fight for the importance of the BBC.
Turness could not have known how a small part of a Panorama episode was edited. The case against her is much more serious.
She eviscerated Newsnight and closed programmes such as Hard Talk, instead preferring what many see as vacuous rolling 24-hour news, in an age where context, analysis and investigative journalism could hardly be more vital.
Resignations create vacancies and an opportunity to change direction
The next chief executive of BBC News should be committed to reversing the exodus of journalistic talent from the BBC and reducing the emphasis on the ephemeral.
Ultimately, substance matters. That probably argues for an appointment from outside the BBC.
There is an even stronger case for an outsider to become the next director-general. Still, that person has to be able to argue the case endlessly in public and in Parliament for the survival of the BBC as a universal public service broadcaster paid for by everyone.
Such a person would have to have had serious editorial experience and equally serious balls.
That is why the next director-general of the BBC should be the first woman to lead the BBC, and Alex Mahon, former chief executive of Channel 4, who successfully led the fight against her channel’s privatisation, would be worth a serious look.
The time must end when the BBC is so fragile an institution that butterfly wings can almost end up blowing it away.
Raymond Snoddy is a media consultant, national newspaper columnist and former presenter of NewsWatch on BBC News. He writes for The Media Leader on Wednesdays — bookmark his column here.