What’s happening at the BBC?

A BBC employee explains what’s behind the most recent scandal at the organisation.

Over the weekend of 8 November, to the surprise of staff, the public, and figures in the media, the BBC’s 17th director general Tim Davie, resigned, as did the head of UK News, Deborah Turness. This has destabilised the organisation at a critical period, with the BBC Charter up for renewal in 2027. The resignation announcements came following a pressure campaign by the Telegraph newspaper via a leaked 39-page memo. The memo accused the editors of the BBC’s Panorama programme of doctoring footage of US president, Donald Trump, to give the impression that he endorsed the Capitol Hill riots. Tim Davie had been director general since 2020 (having worked at the BBC since 2005). He had overseen restructuring and cuts, slashing 10 per cent of the BBC Public Service workforce over the past five years, including local radio the drama and comedy production teams. These cuts are set to continue despite Davie’s resignation, with the recently leaked details of ‘Project Ada’ aiming to save £100m a year through departmental cuts and outsourcing.

To understand the seriousness of this moment for the BBC, we need to situate it in context. Scandals and resignations at senior level have happened before in the organisation’s history, of course, and this is not the first row to erupt between the government and the BBC Back in 2003, Radio 4’s flagship Today programme claimed that Alistair Campbell, aide to PM Tony Blair, had used the ‘dodgy dossier’ to knowingly exaggerate the claim that Saddam Hussain could launch nuclear weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes. A BBC journalist stated that scientist Dr David Kelly, in an originally off-the-record conversation, had specifically named Campbell as the source of the doctoring. Kelly denied naming Campbell. Days later Kelly was found dead near his home. Instead of the government facing consequences for the death of a scientist whose advice it had asked for, a row ensued between the government and the BBC. This is the same Alastair Campbell who has recently commented on the current scandal, in a supposed defence of the BBC’s independence. 

Nor is it the first scandal that Davie has weathered. Two other striking examples are the sacking of Gary Linkeker from his 26-year career on Match of the Day (for reposting a video about Zionism which included a rat emoji in the repost) and the Glastonbury summer 2025 coverage. To placate the political right, the BBC live events team refused to broadcast the vocally pro-Palestine Irish band Kneecap at Glastonbury. This attempt failed, as the band Bob Vylan started the chant ‘Death, death to the IDF’, which the crowd chanted back, and the BBC broadcast live. 

But the Trump-Panorama scandal became one too many for Davie to weather. As he said in the all-staff call on 10 November, there were three reasons for his resignation: first, personal/family, second, in his own words, ‘we did make a mistake and some responsibility had to be taken’, and third, the BBC needs a new director general with no scandals behind them to steer it into direct negotiations with the government for the licence fee renewal. Davie was careful in his use of language. He did not take personal responsibility for the Panorama error, but he did accept that someone had to take the blame and that, ultimately, this was always going to be the director general. 

All this raises the question: why has the Telegraph and the political right made their move now? The first reason is opportunity: the mistake Panorama made gave them an excuse. Every small mistake the BBC makes is fuel for the right. BBC staff members know this, and such knowledge raises stress levels and places those who work there in a constant state of threat-readiness – not the best environment in which to work effectively. 

The second reason the right moved to oust Davie now concerns the upcoming renewal of the Royal Charter, which expires on 31 December 2027. The cur rent Royal Charter licence has been in place since 2017. It outlines the BBC’s public obligations, editorial independence and linked to this, what licence fee funding the BBC can expect from the government. The BBC has been preparing for this for a while, hosting ‘listening exercises’ with the public and internal staff sessions, while reworking its strategy to provide evidence to the government that the BBC is representing Britain. This has been backed by the BBC unions. The largest union at the BBC, the Broadcasting, Entertainment, Communications and Theatre Union (BECTU), has been running its License to More campaign, which makes the case that the BBC is more than just the license fee we pay once a year: rather it is an important and unique part of British culture. The Royal Charter renewal process always puts the BBC on the defensive. It creates more work for staff in already slimmed-down departments, and employees know that if they do not sufficiently placate the government of the day, their jobs, as well as public service journalism more broadly, are at risk. 

Since the BBC has always been government funded, it has always been (and has always felt like it has to be) subservient to the incumbent government. This is the constant tension of public service broadcasting. After all, how can you hold the government to account and represent the public interest, when that very same body is the one that funds you?

Samir Shah is the current chair of the BBC. With Shah at the helm until a new director general is appointed, the BBC has a pro-privatisation boss. Shah said in 2008 that the corporation’s ‘one BBC’ ethos (a key part of the current strategy to present their output to the Government in order to receive a favourable deal for the Royal Charter renewal) makes it anti-competitive. But competitiveness is a notion that goes against the ethos of public service broadcasting. Shah has been providing quotes to the press in the wake of Davie’s resignation. When he appeared alongside Davie in the all-staff call, he said that the purpose of the BBC board is first, to ‘hold the executive to account’, and second, to ‘support the executive and defend them’. He acknowledged the tensions between the two. How can you hold the executive to account when your remit is to support them? It comes close to being irreconcilable. 

This brings us to another important member of the BBC board, Sir Robbie Gibb, former prime minister Theresa May’s director of communications. Gibb provides another example, as with Alastair Campbell, of a prime minister’s director of communications being directly linked to BBC scandals. Gibb is one of the political appointees to the BBC board, of which five of the 13 members are appointed by the government of the day. Samir Shah himself was on the interview panel that appointed Gibb. In light of this latest scandal, Gibb’s presence on the board and his political influence is being heavily questioned by a range of people and groups across the political spectrum, such as Alistair Campbell, the Liberal Democrats, and BBC unions NUJ and BECTU. The latter organisation stated that Gibb’s position was ‘a distraction and is untenable’. BECTU also published an open letter to Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy and Samir Shah: 

We simply do not see how staff can have faith in the BBC’s leadership while a crucial position on the board is filled by someone perceived by many staff and external commentators as sympathetic to, or actively part of, a campaign to undermine the BBC and influence its political impartiality … our understanding of the BBC Charter is that under Clause 28 it is possible for the Secretary of State, in consultation with the board, to terminate Mr Gibb’s appointment. We would urge you to exercise this power so that staff can have faith that the future of the BBC is being decided by people who truly have its best interests at heart.

In parliament, Labour MP Sarah Owens raised this request with Lisa Nandy, who at this time has said this is a decision for the BBC and not the government.

An additional factor at play here – one that shows the tension between funding, politics, and high-quality journalism – is budget cuts and the consequent outsourcing of BBC programmes. Such outsourcing has been going on for at least two decades. In 2010, cuts to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) fell on the BBC World Service, resulting in a 16 per cent real terms cut. This led to the World Service being funded by the licence fee directly, instead of through Foreign Office funding. Previously it had functioned ideologically and practically as an arm of British soft power. As a result, licence fee funding has had to fund far more programming with, effectively, a smaller budget. The BBC World Service also represents a very diverse range of foreign-language services and an international outlook, which is not a perspective that the political right believes the Government or BBC should represent.

Over the past few years the privatisation of the BBC has happened almost by stealth. Whenever licence fee funding is cut, BBC public service departments (i.e., previously publicly-funded departments) are cut as a result. If they are lucky, these departments might move over to the profit-making private company that is BBC Studios. Furthermore, because the BBC has a reduced budget and a hiring freeze, it regularly makes programmes in co-production with independent producers (for example, the 2025 release The Settlers documentary in Palestine with Louis Theroux’s production company Mindhouse). The risk with this is that independent producers do not have the institutional knowledge, training and legal experience that in-house BBC teams do. Many independent producers do not have large legal teams and staff to check programme quality. The issue of outsourcing programmes was also raised by staff directly to Davie and Shah on the post-resignation all-staff call. Davie praised the in-house production team and said holding production partners to in-house standards was worth looking at, while Shah maintained that even questioning this was preposterous. 

So, what now for the BBC? I spoke to a former World Service executive after Davie’s resignation, who predicted that internally, all-staff training will be given, emphasising impartiality, as has been done before when a director general has resigned. This latest scandal and resignation is just the latest in a long line of BBC director generals falling on their sword as a sacrificial lamb in front of the political right for whom their sacrifice will never be enough. The board will go on to choose a new director general and head of news; the privatisation and outsourcing will continue; the BBC will continue to placate the Government. The current Labour government will renew the BBC’s Royal Charter but cut the licence fee (giving an excuse of cost efficiency) Some BBC staff will lose their jobs and the political right will continue its long march through the institutions, without even having to be in government to achieve it.