Retweeting one of Piers Morgan’s anti-government tirades “If failing to quarantine properly is punishable by 10yrs in prison, what is the punishment for failing to properly protect the country from a pandemic?” led to a 4 months long BBC investigation which has concluded that Newsnight’s Emily Maitlis has once again broken BBC impartiality rules. Shocker…

The BBC’s rules on impartiality clearly state:

“Expressions of opinion on social media can take many forms – from straightforward tweets or updates, sharing or liking content, following particular accounts or using campaigning or political hashtags.

If for example a member of staff repeatedly likes or shares, without comment, content reflecting a particular point of view on a matter of public controversy it might create the impression that individual agrees with that view.”

The retweet, which according to the BBC’s report was deleted after 10 minutes, “implied sharp criticism of the government”. Implied? The report added that there was “no surrounding context to make clear that Ms Maitlis was not endorsing it or to draw attention to alternative views”. Guido frets for the future of the BBC if it really took investigators 4 months to read 25 words and come up with that… 

The BBC investigation’s findings have been reported to the Board of BBC News and discussed with Ms Maitlis. So another slap on the wrist for Emily…