Samir Shah, Deborah Turness and Jonathan Munro have made a dangerous, well-connected enemy of Michael Prescott, who left the BBC as a part-time editorial adviser in September.
Michael Prescott was a hack - he took a post-graduate course in journalism at Cardiff, after PPE at St Catherine's, Oxford, before short jobs with the Mirror (alongside Alastair Campbell) and the BBC. He was at the Sunday Times on the politics beat for 10 years, whilst also finding time to be a side-kick to Michael Parkinson on Radio 2. He then joined Weber Shandwick PR, spent time as Corporate Affairs Director at BT. From 2015 to 2017 he was an External Director of the Cabinet Office’s Government Communications Service, 2015 – 17 (Matthew Hancock and Ben Gummer were Ministers). In February 2017, he joined Hanover Communications as Managing Director Corporate and Political Strategy.
He was co-opted onto the BBC Board's Editorial Standards Committee by Elan Closs Stephens, Nick Serota, Phil Harrold and Robbie Gibb. The FT has described him as a friend of Robbie Gibb.
Mr Prescott's farewell to the BBC included a 19 page dossier sent to BBC Board members last month, highlighting editing of Donald Trump's speech on 6th January 2021 in a Panorama on the invasion of the Capitol that day. “I have been surprised at just how defensive Deborah and Jonathan in particular have been whenever issues are raised. Firm and transparent action plans to prevent the re-occurrence of problems are in short supply – and so, as you can see, errors are repeated time and again.” He also wrote to Samir Shah asking for action on Panorama and got no reply.
Omg the BBC's governance is a stupid mess. What IS the BBC Board now for, exactly, if Ofcom is in charge of oversight? It's horribly mixed with the Executive Committee: four members - DG Tim Davie, Chief Content Officer Charlotte Moore, Chief Operating Officer Leigh Tavaziva and News CEO Deborah Turness - serve on both.
ReplyDeleteAnd the Editorial Guidelines and Standards Committee (EGSC) is drawn mainly from the Board, with four of its five members - Shah, Davie, Turness & Senior Independent Director Caroline Thompson - also being Board members; only Sir Robbie Gibb is neither a Board or Exec Ctee member. David Grossman still serves as the EGSC's Senior Editorial Policy Advisor, but we don't really know who, if anyone, replaced Michael Prescott and Caroline Daniel as its external editorial advisers.
The EGSC is now under fire for not taking its own advisor's criticism seriously enough, but what exactly is Samir Shah's role as Chair meant to achieve? Bluntly, as the guy at the very top of the BBC tree AND an EGSC member, he's part of the problem alongside DG & Editor-in-Chief Davie, and News CEO Turness. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Ooh, well Ofcom, of course, Auntie's Auntie, right? Except Ofcom has no power to sack either the BBC's Chair or its DG. The BBC Chair can sack the DG, though. Which might lead to accusations of the pot/kettle type.
Step forward, Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy. Who does have the power - at least, with the PM's agreement - to sack the BBC Chair. But not the DG: that's up to the BBC Board (four of whom are under fire in this mess), as is any decision on Deborah Turness's fitness to continue as News CEO.
Clear? As mud.
As an interim measure, Ms Nandy might like to consider a Very Large Circular Firing Squad. It would, y'know, clear the decks.
ReplyDeleteNo, no, no. The answer is... BBC Governance Traitors. In which everyone is allowed to be either a Faithful or a Traitor, as prevailing circumstances demand, or according to what side of the bed they got up on. I mean, they'll all feel very familiar with the Round Table discussions culminating in a long series of bad decisions.
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