The loneliness of the long distance runner

Tim Davie has resigned his post as Director-General (D-G) of the BBC following revelations of biased editing in a Panorama exposé of Donald Trump's alleged incitement to storm the US Capitol on 6 January 2021.

Davie was appointed to the role in 2020 at a salary north of £500,000 per annum. A keen marathon-runner, he has proved to be not so fleet of foot in his handling of this scandal, merely the latest in a long lineup to hit the troubled public broadcasting Corporation, though possibly its biggest yet and conceivably an existential one. Now Trump has threatened a billion dollar lawsuit and, with nowhere to run to, nowhere to hide, the running man has wisely chosen this moment to hang up his running shoes - at least as far as running the BBC is concerned.

For his part, the BBC Board Chair, Samir Shah, has admitted the edit of Trump’s speech was “an error of judgment”. No, Mr Shah, it was a crass, stupid and above all, inept act of vandalism. If you're going to doctor the truth for propaganda purposes at least try to it with some subtlety. It's hard to imagine the Kremlin sending out something as obvious as this. Admittedly the sequence was smoothly elided and avoided notice for some time but to cut almost an hour's worth of a controversial public speech and expect it to escape notice speaks of smug arrogance and complacency. 

Whoever actually made the cut obviously felt entitled to do so as Trump was almost universally despised at the time but that didn't make him fair game for malpractice and certainly not on the part of an organisation priding itself on its integrity and impartiality, and being widely taken at its own valuation worldwide. That a man like Trump, possessing not an iota of integrity, should be its nemesis makes it an even more tragic reversal of fortunes.

But regardless of what Trump does next, the BBC will be extremely lucky to survive this episode in anything like its current form, and probably doesn't deserve to. It has been living on borrowed time, and on a rapidly-diminishing reputation built up assiduosly over a century. In its 123-year history, as a public service broadcaster operating under a Royal Charter, the BBC has never had a female Director-General. Now might be a good time to give it a go and the Guardian has named several high-profile, appropriately experienced, female potential candidates, including Jane Turton (CEO of All3Media), Charlotte Moore (formerly of the BBC and now CEO of Left Bank Pictures), and Jay Hunt (formerly of the BBC and now at Apple TV). 

No-one should doubt the ability of any of these women named to do the job excellently well but whether they are free, or inclined, to take on the role at this perilous moment in the institution's history is another matter entirely. Why should a woman have to step in to sort out the blokish mess bequeathed by a series of swaggering men?

Lord Reith (D-G 1927-38) an autocratic but idealistic man, must be spinning in his grave.

Popular posts from this blog

2024 - a year to forget?*

As we approach the end of another rollercoaster year of 'natural' and manmade disasters, I'm taking a moment to look back - and forward. Janus, the two-faced Roman god, gave his name to the month of January, a time for both reflection and anticipation. But as I find myself unexpectedly housebound with a bout of 'flu - or it could be Covid but who has a lateral flow test kit lying around these days? - I'm self-isolating for the remainder of December. Fortuitously, this gives me some time to ponder the existential ' quo vadis ?' questions now rather than waiting until the New Year. I can always have another bite of the glacé cherry then, of course, so these are just some preliminary musings, though with so much hanging in the balance - Syria, Gaza, Ukraine, a second Trump presidency - my observations at this stage can't really be anything more than prefatory. Let's start with the unfolding situation in Syria, the outcome of which could prove to be piv...
Read more

The eagle has landed

The Syrian Arab Republic has just unveiled its new national logo, a golden eagle surmounted by three stars. Just before Christmas ( 2024 - A year to forget, 13/12/24) I pondered the chances for a post-Assad Syria. "Is it possible" I wrote "that, between them, [President] Sharaa and [Prime Minister] Bashir will preside over a national 'truth and reconciliation' process rather than the murderous vengeance that usually follows such upheavals? After the appalling brutality of the Assad regime, and with so many simmering ethnoreligious tensions, it is hard to see how a functioning state, founded on the rule of law, could realistically emerge out of the chaos." Well, seven months on, the emergence of a new symbol for the fledgling state, embodying the aspirations of its pre-Assad past while signposting an inclusive post-Assad future, must give rise to cautious optimism. According to the Arab News report of the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) press release: "th...
Read more

G6.66 - geopolitical sketch

The recent G7 meeting in Canada was scheduled to last three days, Donald Trump managed two. Of course, he pleaded the emerging crisis between Israel and Iran for only staying for two thirds of the meeting but everyone believed, rightly I'm sure, that Trump was bored and just wanted to get home as quickly as possible. He has a short attention span when the focus isn't all on him so having to share a platform with a group of second-rate so-called world leaders was bound to make him fractious. Collegiate is not a word in his lexicon. Besides which, despite his professed love for Canada (so great he wants it as his 51st state), being rusticated in a remote mountain lodge in Alberta is not his style at all. He's a metropolitan to his core, a New Yorker for Chrissakes, and the only grass he feels at home on, apart from the White House lawn, is the golf course - and then preferably one he owns. Someone once unkindly remarked that Canada is a great country, just not for the whole w...
Read more