Fincham Quits Following Queen Doco Shocker

Peter Fincham, the controller of BBC One, has resigned following the Wyatt Report, which claims there were “misjudgements, poor practice and ineffective systems” in the production of the documentary A Year With The Queen.

Sources within the BBC say Fincham and head of press Jane Fletcher, have been in talks with senior executives about their actions following the channel’s autumn launch, in which promotional footage was falsely edited to give the impression that the Queen had stormed out of a photo shoot with Annie Leibovitz.

The pair reportedly decided to quit because they knew by 5pm on the day of the BBC One press launch on July 11 that the story was untrue. But they did not correct it until the following morning, allowing the media – including BBC News – to run with the story.

The BBC did not apologise until July 12, when it admitted the sequence of events in a BBC One documentary about the Queen had been misrepresented and would not be shown that way in the final programme.

Today’s report is expected to be equally critical of Jana Bennett, the director of BBC Vision. Fincham told the inquiry that he made it clear to her in an evening meeting on July 11 that the story was untrue. She disputes this, and is expected to survive for the moment.

The creative director of production company RDF Media, Stephen Lambert, who admitted to the Guardian that he had wrongly edited the footage of the Queen that led to the Crowngate scandal, has also resigned.

At the MGEITF in August, Fincham admitted that the documentary might never be shown, adding “I trusted the footage. I had no reason not to trust the footage” (see Queen Documentary Might Never Be Shown).

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