The BBC Director General has for the first time set out in detail the corporation’s version of events that led to the BAFTA broadcast debacle, while his content chief has told staff “the incident has caused much upset and hurt” internally.
Tim Davie has in the past hour sent a letter to the UK’s Culture, Media & Sport Committee (CMSC) with a play by play, which backs up our reporting from earlier today of the incident. The incident saw the BBC fail to edit out the N-word from its coverage of the BAFTA Film Awards when it was involuntarily shouted by Tourette’s campaigner John Davidson at Sinners stars Delroy Lindo and Michael B. Jordan. It remained on BBC iPlayer for 15 hours afte the ceremony concluded, which Davie also today addressed.
Davie backed up sources from the past couple of weeks who have said that no one in the broadcast truck was aware of Davidson’s N-word when it was shouted for the first time during the live show.
The slur was then involuntarily shouted later by Davidson at Sinners star Wunmi Mosaku, who won Best Supporting Actress, which did get edited out of the BBC broadcast. However, Davie explained that there was confusion between the first time it was yelled and the second.
“Our understanding at this point is that the team editing the show in the truck mistakenly believed they had edited out the incident that was being referenced, on the basis that they had heard and edited out the slur shouted out during the Best Supporting Actress award,” wrote Davie. “Therefore, when they were told a racial slur had been shouted, they believed they had removed it.”
The show then remained on iPlayer that night because “the on-site team did not believe that the slur was audible on the broadcast,” he added, and remained until the morning because the issue “was escalated to the Chief Content Officer, who authorised the removal.”
“We are now looking in more detail why the team did not ascertain sooner that there had been two instances of the use of the racial slur, and why post broadcast further action was not taken to edit or remove the programme from iPlayer sooner,” added Davie.
The BBC’s Executive Complaints Unit (ECU) is examining the issue more deeply and will report back soon. In the meantime he said “lessons had been learned.”
Notably, he said learnings had been taken from the BBC’s previous big scandal, the Glastonbury Bob Vylan saga, in terms of having “editorial policy support on site to improve compliance processes and the speed of available advice,” and yet it still took 15 hours for the ceremony to be taken down from iPlayer.
BBC content boss describes “much upset and hurt”
The Film & TV Charity
Davie’s note to the CMSC landed in inboxes as Chief Content Officer Kate Phillips was sending an internal note to staff, seen by Deadline, saying “the incident has caused much upset and hurt.”
She said she has been in regular communication with BAFTA and has been speaking with BBC staffers all week. She will be holding listening sessions for staff with internal diversity networks BBC Ability, BBC Enigma and BBC Embrace.
“I’m so very sorry that this has happened,” wrote Phillips, who had already written to staff to apologize several days after the incident. “It goes without saying that we treat all complaints with the utmost seriousness, and of course we will be reviewing our own internal processes. Once the ECU investigation has concluded, I’ll share more on the outcomes, and any actions we will be taking to strengthen our processes.”
Earlier today, we reported that Warner Bros. executives had vented anger at the BBC over the debacle during a tense meeting.