What we learned about the BBC from Emily Maitlis's Edinburgh speech

But at the Edinburgh International Television Festival on Wednesday, she went full noise and ripped into the way the corporation was developing its output like never before. 

From cowering on Brexit to speaking about a BBC board member who is an "active agent" of the Tory party, Maitlis did not hold back and was brutally honest about her concerns while delivering the MacTaggart memorial lecture.

Here is a rundown of some of her main points….

“Tory cronyism at the heart of the BBC”

Maitlis talked about a BBC board member being an “active agent of the Conservative party” who was shaping the broadcaster’s output by “acting as the arbiter of BBC impartiality”.

She appeared to be referring to Robbie Gibb, who was appointed to the board last year by Boris Johnson’s government.

He had previously worked as Theresa May’s director of communications and helped found GB News. Prior to working for No 10, he had a 25-year career at the BBC which culminated in his role as head of BBC Westminster.

Since being appointed back to the BBC, he has influenced a series of ongoing reviews on the broadcaster’s output.

Maitlis said: "According to the Financial Times, he's attempted to block the appointments of journalists he considers damaging to government relations, provoking Labour's deputy leader (among others) to call it 'Tory cronyism at the heart of the BBC'."

The BBC is “pacifying” Downing Street

Maitlis went further in slating the BBC’s relationship with the Tory UK Government, accusing the broadcaster of going out of its way to “pacify” Downing Street.

She was twice accused of showing bias against Boris Johnson’s government while working for the BBC – the first when she discussed former government adviser Dominic Cummings’ lockdown trip and the second after she retweeted Piers Morgan who questioned the government’s response to the Covid-19 crisis.

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But during the lecture she explained that after she criticised Cummings for his breach of lockdown rules on Newsnight – saying he had “broken the rules” and “the country can see that, and it’s shocked the government cannot” – she said all the programme initially attracted was a few pleasant texts from BBC editors.

It was only when a complaint came in from Downing Street the next day that, she said, “the wheels came off” and a public apology was made about her report.

She said: “What was not foreseen was the speed with which the BBC sought to pacify the complainant. Within hours, a very public apology was made, the programme was accused of a failure of impartiality, the recording disappeared from iPlayer, and there were paparazzi outside my front door.

Emily Maitlis used an appearance in Edinburgh to tear into the BBC's output

“Put this in the context of the BBC Board, where another active agent of the Conservative party – former Downing Street spin doctor, and former adviser to BBC rival GB News – now sits, acting as the arbiter of BBC impartiality.”

The corporation has slipped into “both-sides-ism”

Although impartiality is supposed to be at the heart of what the BBC produce, Maitlis suggested it often shot itself in the foot.

She spoke of how she felt the BBC often slipped into “both-sides-ism” in its approach to impartiality, resulting in individuals who don’t deserve airtime being handed a platform.

She mentioned how during the EU referendum, the BBC would put one pro-Brexit economist on air to debate with one anti-Brexit economist, even though most economists felt leaving the bloc was a bad idea, creating a skewed picture for the public in an attempt to be balanced.

She said: "It might take our producers five minutes to find 60 economists who feared Brexit and five hours to find a sole voice who espoused it.

"But by the time we went on air we simply had one of each; we presented this unequal effort to our audience as balance. It wasn't."

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The BBC is cowering over Brexit

Continuing with her criticism of how the BBC was going about impartiality, she talked about how both the corporation and government-supporting papers were appearing “to go into an automatic crouch position whenever Brexit looms large".

She said outlets were reluctant to discuss its impact despite queues at Dover and the ever-growing list of issues with the economy.

She accused some organisations of being scared of addressing the issue “in case they get labelled pessimistic, anti-populist, or worse still, as above: unpatriotic”.

She added: “Why should our viewers, our listeners, come to us to interpret and explain what is going on when they can see our own reluctance to do so?”

Journalists are being forced to self-censor themselves

Maitlis spoke of how journalists are feeling as if they have to censor their content to avoid backlash and appear fair, a statement which will surely chime with many in the profession.

Maitlis said: “Facts are getting lost, constitutional norms trashed, claims frequently unchallenged.

“We are primed to back down, or even apologise, to prove how journalistically fair we are being, and that can then be exploited by those crying ‘bias!’”