BBC boss insists ‘no influence’ from UK government in Emily Maitlis Newsnight case

By Naomi Clarke and Alex Green, PA

The BBC’s chief content officer has insisted that “in no way was there any influence from the Government or the board” on the BBC over its decision to rebuke Emily Maitlis over her Newsnight monologue.

Speaking at the Edinburgh TV Festival, Charlotte Moore said the former BBC journalist’s MacTaggart Lecture on Wednesday had been on an “incredibly important subject”.

Maitlis, who left the broadcaster this year for rival media group Global, used the speech to argue the media has failed to adapt to a change in politics and was guilty of “normalising” populist ideas.

She also claimed the BBC had “sought to pacify” Number 10 by issuing a swift apology following her 2020 segment about Dominic Cummings’ lockdown trip to Durham.

The broadcaster received more than 20,000 complaints and ruled Maitlis breached impartiality rules, saying in a statement: “We believe the introduction we broadcast did not meet our standards of due impartiality.”

At the festival on Thursday, Ms Moore said impartiality is “particularly important for the BBC”, adding she feels viewers expect that from the broadcaster, especially when it comes to holding politicians to account.

Reflecting on Maitlis’ Newsnight comments about Mr Cummings, who was then Boris Johnson’s chief adviser, Moore said that everybody at the BBC was held to standards of “due impartiality”.

Responding to her speech on Thursday, the BBC said: “As we have made clear previously in relation to Newsnight we did not take action as a result of any pressure from Number 10 or Government and to suggest otherwise is wrong.”

Ms Moore also hit back at Channel 4’s chief content officer Ian Katz, who earlier in the day described the current trend of TV reboots as “depressing”.

She said reviving older shows takes creativity, can be “challenging” and that you have to do it “judiciously” and with “real intent to reinvent it for a new generation” before adding: “They brought Bake Off and repeated that.”

Ms Moore also said she wishes all of the high-profile staff who have left the BBC in the past year well and said that the departures provide great opportunity for new talent to come up in their place.

She said she was “sorry to see them go”, but that is was the “natural course of things in a competitive landscape” and that if other outlets did not want to poach BBC talent, then they would be “getting it wrong”.

She added that the BBC will continue to grow and adapt, adding that she does not feel people leaving is causing the broadcaster to struggle to find new talent.

Elsewhere, during the panel, Moore defended the decision to bring BBC Three back as a TV channel while planning to move certain channels like BBC Four online.

She added that she feels their “shows are very good value for audiences” and feels it is important to have the channels outside their main ones to “drive and grow iPlayer”.

Moore added that they will not close those extra channels until they think they do not bring value to audiences.

Kate Phillips, director of BBC unscripted, also told the festival audience she is “so excited” for the BBC to broadcast Eurovision 2023, but recognised it is not a cheap event for the broadcaster to take on.

She said the song content is a “massive beast”, but highlighted it has a “complex funding structure” which includes funding from EBU, participants and from the host city.

“I do not want people to worry that I am taking all the unscripted money… that is absolutely not the case,” she added.