{"id":81792,"date":"2025-10-16T08:40:06","date_gmt":"2025-10-16T08:40:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/81792\/"},"modified":"2025-10-16T08:40:06","modified_gmt":"2025-10-16T08:40:06","slug":"bbc-must-be-free-of-political-interference-viewers-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/81792\/","title":{"rendered":"BBC must be free of political interference, viewers say"},"content":{"rendered":"

The BBC invited audience members to have their say in a series of on-air promotions across TV and radio. It also sent emails to 40 million BBC account holders.<\/p>\n

The results of the Our BBC, Our Future questionnaire come after the relationship between the BBC and the government has been in the spotlight.<\/p>\n

Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy appeared to call for Mr Davie’s resignation this summer after a string of scandals, including antisemitic comments by punk duo Bob Vylan at Glastonbury being broadcast on iPlayer, and the revelation that a Gaza documentary was narrated by the son of a Hamas official.<\/p>\n

In August, former BBC director of news James Harding told the Edinburgh TV Festival<\/a> that Nandy’s involvement in the Bob Vylan scandal was “chilling”, and criticised “political interference”, or the perception of it, at the BBC.<\/p>\n

Last year, BBC chair Samir Shah said there was “an almost perpetual government review over the BBC” as a result of the requirement for ministers to renew the broadcaster’s royal charter every 10 years.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, questions about the BBC’s independence were raised when former Tory donor and Rishi Sunak’s ex-boss Richard Sharp was named BBC chair in 2021. Mr Sharp resigned two years later over his links to Boris Johnson.<\/p>\n

Also in 2021, Theresa May’s former communications chief Sir Robbie Gibb was appointed to the BBC board.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The BBC invited audience members to have their say in a series of on-air promotions across TV and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":81793,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[156,111,139,69,437],"class_list":{"0":"post-81792","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-new-zealand","10":"tag-newzealand","11":"tag-nz","12":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81792","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81792"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81792\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/81793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}