The BBC Needs Saving From Itself

That was BBC deputy director-general Rhodri Talfan Davies’s response to calls for outside scrutiny following the latest wave of allegations about antisemitism within the corporation. After Lucie Kon’s account of her treatment, and against a backdrop of years of complaints from Jewish staff, his answer was that the BBC’s existing processes were robust enough.

Those processes are precisely what need investigating.

After more than three years of complaints from Jewish employees, revelations about contributors, editorial failures and repeated assurances that lessons have been learned, the BBC still believes its confidence in itself should settle everyone else’s concerns. It wants to mark its own homework when the integrity of the marking system is in dispute.

From an institution whose journalists demand transparency from everyone else, this is extraordinary arrogance. For Jewish people who have spent these years asking to be heard, it conveys something worse, utter indifference to the pain and suffering of a minority who have been crying out for nothing more than fair and equal treatment.

Consider Lucie Kon, the award-winning former BBC commissioning editor who received a settlement reported at more than £400,000 after bringing proceedings against the corporation. She alleges that colleagues described Zionists such as her as “evil” and questioned her suitability to oversee a documentary about October 7th because she was Jewish. The BBC settled without admitting liability and says its internal processes did not uphold her antisemitism allegations.

That is the institution’s answer, our procedures cleared us, that is always the institutions answer.

However, if Jewish identity was invoked as grounds for doubting a programme-maker’s professional integrity, the question demands an answer beyond the procedures whose adequacy is being challenged. Being Jewish cannot become a professional disqualification from telling the story of murdered Jews, especially from an organisation which tells us so often of the importance of “lived experience.”

Nor did these concerns begin with Kon. In 2024, more than 200 Jewish staff, contributors and suppliers challenged the BBC’s handling of antisemitism complaints. The chair of the parliamentary group against antisemitism warned that Jewish employees’ concerns were being dismissed and raised the possibility of a wider institutional problem.

How many people must speak before the BBC accepts that it cannot answer them simply by referring them back to itself?

There is a basic question of leadership here, too, or rather what appears to be a distinct lack of.

Kon says her request to meet the new director-general, Matt Brittin, was rejected. There is a further allegation that, following the revelations about her treatment, the Jewish Staff Network requested a meeting with him to explain what Jewish employees have experienced since October 7th. That request was allegedly declined, with his deputy offered instead. If accurate, Brittin should explain that decision, not hide behind his deputy, process and importance.

A leaders presence tells their team that their experiences matter and that you are willing to confront uncomfortable truths about the organisation you lead. Sending the deputy who now considers independent scrutiny unnecessary offers precious little reassurance. Brittin inherited these problems, he did not create them, but he now owns his response and can and should be judged by his actions and those of the organisation he now leads.

The editorial record makes that response more consequential still.

Michael Prescott, a former external adviser to the BBC’s editorial standards committee, raised serious concerns about BBC Arabic. Reporting on his dossier described contributors with grotesquely antisemitic views making hundreds of appearances. Samer Elzaenen, who had invoked Hitler in threatening Jews, reportedly appeared 244 times. Ahmed Alagha, who had described Jews as devils, appeared 522 times. The BBC’s observation that these individuals were not employees cannot absolve it of responsibility for repeatedly putting them before its audiences. Employment status does not remove editorial responsibility.

Then came Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone. Ofcom found that failing to disclose the narrator’s father’s position in the Hamas-run administration materially misled viewers. BBC chairman Samir Shah described the documentary failure as a “dagger to the heart” of impartiality. Quite the indictment from the man charged with overseeing the BBC’s external facing public accountability.

These failures extend far beyond news documentaries.

At Glastonbury in June 2025, the BBC livestreamed Bob Vylan leading a crowd in chants of “death, death to the IDF”. It subsequently acknowledged that it should have cut away. Jewish audiences watched their national broadcaster transmit a festival crowd chanting for the deaths of soldiers in a country where military service touches almost every Jewish family.

Weeks earlier, Gary Lineker had shared a video about Zionism featuring a rat image, invoking the poisonous association of Jews with vermin. He deleted it and apologised, saying he had not noticed the image and his remaining BBC commitments were curtailed. Yet the BBC still gave him a lavish celebratory farewell: the montage, the famous faces, the affectionate tributes and the tears. Even after that post, the corporation found ample airtime to celebrate him. Jewish viewers were left to absorb the juxtaposition of an antisemitic image amplified, followed days later by an evening of institutional affection.

Still after all of this, the lessons one hoped would have been learnt, the failures continue.

On 11 October this year, Bushra Shaikh appeared on BBC One’s Sunday Morning Live. Her social media history included describing Jews moving to Israel as “lying scumbags”, telling them to return to Europe and posting an approving comparison between the 7 October attacks and Ukraine’s military efforts. Shaikh denies antisemitism, which is odd given how proud she seems to be of her celebratory statements regarding the Hamas massacre. Another appearance, another exposure, another admission that checks were inadequate.

Then, finally, there is Jeremy Bowen. An edited recording from a Glasgow event appears to show the BBC’s international editor expressing his personal conclusion that genocide is occurring in Gaza. The BBC says the excerpt omits his explanation that the allegation remains contested and awaits legal determination.

This is the same journalist who described Al-Ahli hospital as “flattened” after the October 2023 explosion, in reporting that pointed towards Israeli responsibility before the evidence justified it. He subsequently acknowledged that his description was wrong, yet said he did not “regret one thing” about his reporting. An error acknowledged, but no regret expressed at the damage this “mistake” caused to British Jewry. What reassurance was that supposed to offer audiences relying on the BBC to distinguish evidence from speculation?

The BBC demands evidence from those it scrutinises; surely its own senior journalists should face the same standard.

Across contributor vetting, live broadcasting, public statements and workplace complaints, the corporation keeps asking us to trust systems whose failures keep being exposed.

Tim Davie and Deborah Turness resigned last November amid the Trump-edit controversy. Their departure did not resolve these separate questions about antisemitism, editorial culture and the treatment of Jewish colleagues. Changing the people at the top means little if the institutional response remains defensive and incurious.

The BBC’s future is now under discussion, with the current Charter set to expire at the end of 2027, and decisions about governance and funding currently being made. The BBC wants the public to sustain its privileged position. It expects payment from households watching and making the choice to pay for alternative platforms, even when they choose not to consume the BBC’s services.

That demand, at the very least, carries an obligation to accept meaningful accountability.

An independent inquiry should hear protected testimony from Jewish employees, examine editorial and management decisions, test how complaints were handled and publish its findings. The BBC must relinquish control over deciding whether the evidence reveals a wider institutional failure. No institution is entitled to public confidence, certainly none can demand it while refusing the scrutiny necessary to rebuild it.

The BBC needs saving from itself and to be absolutely clear, it is an institution worth saving. I know its importance to British creativity, the reach of its journalism and the value of its finest programmes. It remains one of the last great British institutions. With proper reform, courageous leadership and a willingness to confront its own failures, it can remain so for generations to come. However, that requires leaders who understand that protecting the BBC means exposing what is wrong within it. Every attempt to shield the institution from scrutiny further damages the trust on which its future depends.

Shah called the documentary scandal a “dagger to the heart of impartiality.” Refusing independent scrutiny now threatens a dagger to the heart of the BBC’s future.

Fear of what an inquiry might uncover is no reason to bury the truth. Uncovering difficult truths is what the BBC asks us to value it for.