Top BBC figures have been made to explain themselves in front of a committee of MPs over the row about Panorama, as ITV News Correspondent Geraint Vincent reports
BBC chairman Samir Shah has said the broadcaster was too slow in responding to the Panorama edit of US President Donald Trump.
MPs on the Culture, Media and Sport Committee quizzed Shah and other BBC key figures on Monday, amid concerns around the broadcaster’s impartiality following the editing of Trump’s January 6 2021 speech on Panorama.
The Panorama documentary was broadcast a week before the US election, with clips of the speech spliced together, so it appeared he had told supporters he was going to walk to the US Capitol with them to “fight like hell”.
When asked why the board did not apologise for the edit when it was first flagged by David Grossman, Shah said: “Looking back, I think we should have made the decision earlier. I think in May, as it happens.
“I think there is an issue about how quickly we respond, the speed of our response. Why do we not do it quickly enough? Why do we take so much time? And this was another illustration of that.
“We should have, the collective, we should have pursued it to the end and got to the bottom of it and not wait, as we did, until it became public discourse.”
Following reports of the leaked memo, it took nearly a week for the BBC to issue an apology.
When asked about the delay, Shah replied: “I needed to understand what went wrong and to get the right answer. Getting the right answer is really important.
“It took time to get it right. We knew what the actual apology was for. I said it wasn’t just about splicing, the editing. It was about the impression and that had to be done properly and investigated thoroughly.
“I needed to be sure and I was right about what I was saying. This is a very, very important error, and I needed to make sure that what I was apologising for was fully sourced and fully right. It needed to be right, and it took its time.”
The fallout from the report led to the resignation of both the director-general Tim Davie and the head of news Deborah Turness. while Shah apologised on behalf of the BBC over an “error of judgment” and accepted that the editing of the 2024 documentary gave “the impression of a direct call for violent action”.
Trump has since threatened the BBC with a billion-dollar lawsuit after the report was made public, while the US regulator, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), launched an investigation.
Shah told the Committee he “spent a great deal of time” trying to stop Mr Davie from resigning.
He said: “I do not think the director-general should have resigned.
“I think that the act by the director of news was an honourable and proper act. I think she (Turness) took responsibility for which I will again say I applaud her for doing so.”
A job advert for the BBC director-general post has now gone live on the corporation’s careers site, but Shah said he is “inclined” to restructure the position after arguing it has become “too big for one person”.
Former BBC editorial adviser Michael Prescott was also questioned and said he does not believe the broadcaster is institutionally biased, but there is “real work that needs to be done”.
Prescot raised concerns that the Panorama episode included selective editing of a speech made by Trump before the attack on the US Capitol in 2021.
He added that he witnessed “incipient problems” at the corporation that were “not being tackled properly”.
“What troubled me was that during my three years on the BBC standards committee, we kept seeing incipient problems which I thought were not being tackled properly. And, indeed, I thought the problems were getting worse,” he said.
“I do not think it (the BBC) is institutionally biased.
“We were finding the odd problem here, the odd problem there.
“And the crucial thing was, when I say odd problem here and there, every single thing we spotted, as per my memo, seemed to me to have systemic causes.
“The root of my disagreement and slight concern even today is that the BBC was not – and I hope they will change – treating these as having systemic causes.
“There’s real work that needs to be done at the BBC.”
Last week, BBC board member Shumeet Banerji also announced he would be leaving his role.
Sir Robbie, a former senior Conservative Party adviser, has faced calls for his removal from the BBC board, with creative industries union Bectu saying his position was “untenable”.
He has not spoken about the criticism of his board role.
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