Quite a week for the BBC. BBC Director General Tim Davie and BBC News CEO Deborah Turness resigned in the same week. Donald Trump threatened the BBC with a lawsuit for more than $1 billion. A story that reverberated through the political and media world, so naturally there’s a lot of podcasts reacting and providing analysis on the story.
On Roger Bolton’s Beeb Watch, Richard Ayre, who is the former Deputy Chief Executive of BBC News, talked about the current governance system of the BBC and how that needs reform: “We have to take all public appointments out of political hands, and that includes the non-executive directors of the BBC," says Ayre.
Prospect editor Alan Rusbridger is joined by co-host Janine Gibson, Editor of the Weekend Financial Times on Media Confidential. They talk about how the BBC Board is far from perfect, but previous iterations were not great either: “Before there was the BBC Board, there was the BBC Board of Governors and the BBC Trust,” says Gibson. “These things were merged into this new entity that currently exists. I'm afraid that previous iterations were equally useless.”
Meanwhile The Media Club with Matt Deegan has The Telegraph media editor James Warrington, whose paper broke the original story along with Patrick Younge, the former BBC Chief Creative Officer.
They both discussed whether the BBC will end up paying Trump, and whether they should: “If the BBC were to bend the knee on this one, they would lose all of their trust and credibility at home and abroad, and they would lose their staff.” said Younge.
