Don’t let BBC Director General Tim Davie hear you say the word “talent.”
With the BBC’s review into dodgy workplace behavior kicking off following the Huw Edwards, Strictly Come Dancing and Jermaine Jenas scandals, the DG said he has banned a word that has been common parlance in the TV industry for decades.
Speaking to the BBC’s Today program in the past few minutes, Davie said to presenter Nick Robinson: “We often refer to people like yourself as ‘talent’ but I’ve kind of banned that. You’re a presenter, I’m a leader of an organization, and we’re here to serve.”
When Robinson later tried to use the word again, Davie interjected to remind him that it is banned.
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He said the BBC is “acting in good faith” to get to a situation whereby “everyone is treated equally regardless of rank.” The new review, he added, will “be helpful for us” in “sorting this culture.”
Following the Edwards debacle, which eventually saw the former newsreader handed a suspended sentence for making indecent images of children, the workplace review was ordered by the BBC Board. Work began in earnest late last week with the appointment of Change Associates examining a range of ways in which the corporation can improve. Critics have pointed to the fact that the same organization probed workplace culture more than a decade ago at the BBC and insiders have told us they will dish dirt in the coming weeks.
Davie said the issues run deeper than a hangover from a culture of “boozy lunches.” “It’s about how people deploy power in a workplace,” he said. “Many good or bad things happen in the ‘new age’ but one thing we should take comfort from is that things are improving. People need to speak up and need to be heard.”
Davie has repeatedly been pressed on whether the BBC will recover the circa-£200,000 ($260,000) paid to Edwards during the time from when he was arrested in November 2023 and when he left in April 2024. BBC lawyers have been looking into the situation but Davie hinted the money will not be coming anytime soon.
“We have had some dialogue with lawyers but are yet to resolve the issue,” he said. “The ball is clearly not in my court on that one. It’s in his [Edwards].”
“Unchallenged propaganda”
Davie was speaking to the BBC as he prepares to give a speech at the Future Resilience Forum that will urge more investment for the BBC World Service, with the DG set to warn that Russia and China are filling gaps vacated by the World Service with “unchallenged propaganda.”
On Today this morning, he pointed out that forced cuts to BBC Arabic, for example, have created a vacuum for these “malign powers” in areas of conflict such as Lebanon.
The World Service was previously paid for by the government but changes over the past decade have now seen it mostly funded from the licence fee, while the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office gives grants for specific projects.
“China and Russia see the benefit of investing heavily in the media – bordering into pure propaganda but often just taking media assets, frequencies and broadcasting in a world in which 75% of it doesn’t have a free press,” said Davie. “We obsess a lot about the ins and outs of the BBC but if you look at macro trends they are disturbing.”