Kuenssberg tweets:
“After nearly 7 years, in April I’m moving on from best daily reporting job + the most wonderful team in the business. It’s been an honour and an amazing ride – more to come in 2022! With love + thanks to all at @BBCPolitics“
The BBC press office confirms she’ll take up a new “senior presenting and reporting role across the BBC” from Easter with further details to be announced in the new year. Tim Davie says “She’s a superb interviewer and engaging presenter, and I’m thrilled that we are keeping her on our screens and airwaves. I’m looking forward to her next chapter.” Unfortunately the replacement runners and riders were already speculated on back in October…
The BBC’s top execs wriggled under scrutiny from MPs this morning following the appointment of Jess Brammar. There were two main lines to come from the encounter: Tim Davie claimed Brammar deleting her 16,000 tweets was a “good thing to do” and emphasised that Brammar’s position was “3 levels down” in terms of seniority, not number 3 in news. He also complained that the culture war is now raging and making the BBC’s job more difficult; and Richard Sharpe saying he doesn’t think the BBC will figure out where the Robbie Gibb leak came from. Funny given everyone else can make a pretty good guess…
When asked whether Davie was still committed to diversity of thought, and how Brammar’s appointment aided that, he confessed the BBC doesn’t ask applicants their views on issues. Surely making his goal impossible…
The Commons’ DCMS Committee will get an opportunity to scrutinise the BBC’s top bosses tomorrow, with the promise of tough questioning over their foot-shooting decision to hire Jess Brammar as their new executive news editor. The Committee announced on Friday MPs will be graced with the presence of Tim Davie, Richard Sharpe and Leigh Tavaziva, who will face questioning on the Director-General’s progress on his initial priorities, the licence fee and “senior editorial appointments”. Sources clarify this does mean Brammar specifically…
The Committee may also ask questions of how the news of Robbie Gibb voicing his concern over Brammar’s impending appointment made its way to the media in the first place. The process by which a board member’s concerns became public knowledge should surely be a subject of inquiry…
The Times is reporting that the BBC is set to appoint the left-wing former editor of HuffPost Jess Brammar as Head of News. This appointment will be seen by many as a challenge to the claim that the BBC is an impartial news organisation…
Brexit-hating Brammar’s appointment will prove controversial. She has faced opposition from BBC Board member Robbie Gibb and the Leader of the House of Commons Jacob Rees-Mogg who asked whether the BBC would appoint someone from Guido. No doubt a confirmation of her appointment would prompt an even bigger backlash…
Jess Brammar’s appointment comes in spite of the fact that Tim Davie told staff in September 2020 that the BBC must “urgently… champion and recommit to impartiality” and “if you want to be an opinionated columnist or a partisan campaigner on social media, then that is a valid choice, but you should not be working at the BBC”. With Frans Unsworth stepping down after a 40-year career another critical BBC job is up for grabs. That position will need to go to someone who will rein in Brammar’s instincts…
Co-conspirators may remember back to last September when the new BBC director-general Tim Davie appeared before Julian Knight’s select committee, promising to finally deal with the scourge of taxpayer-funded stars using their personal social media profiles to break the BBC’s supposed political neutrality. Knight proffered a specific example of a Gary Lineker anti-government tweet, in response to which Davie promised new powers that would allow the corporation to take stars like Lineker “off Twitter”. At the time he stuck to his word of publishing new social media guidelines in the coming weeks.
Since then, Mr Davie has clearly abandoned the promise, with just two staffers disciplined for social media breaches in the last year. Every other tweet of Gary Lineker’s remains overtly political; from migration to climate change, attacking Sajid Javid to calling the PM a “liar”.
There is no sign at all of the BBC preventing his Twitter rule-breaking, let alone taking him off the platform. If stars know they’re so important the rules don’t apply, the BBC’s unenforced social media guidelines become a sham…
Last October, the BBC’s new Director-General Tim Davie issued new guidance to BBC employees over impartiality on social media, with Davie himself claiming those who break the rules would be taken “off Twitter” and the guidance stating “nothing should appear on […] personal social media accounts that undermine[s] the perception of the BBC’s integrity or impartiality”. The Beeb went further last month, announcing it would even begin new ‘impartiality training’ in the wake of the flag-shagger scandal…
Yet despite all this talk, new Freedom of Information requests reveal that just two staffers have faced any disciplinary action for their social media use in the past year:
“Between 1st April 2020 and the 31st March 2021 there has [sic] been two formal case [sic] where social media has been noted as the reason for the BBC disciplinary process. One individual received a written warning and one individual resigned prior to the disciplinary process concluding.”
Given how some of its top stars have behaved recently, Guido reckons these rules are not being firmly and evenly enforced. One written warning and one pre-emptive resignation in twelve months, yet Naga Munchetty, Chris Packham, Gary Lineker (etc. etc.) continue to act as though the rules don’t apply to them. It’s starting to look like they’re right…
