Prescott emphatic over questions of biaspublished at 16:04 GMT
16:04 GMT
Noor Nanji
Culture reporter
After all the drama of the past few weeks, it all comes down to one key question: is the BBC institutionally biased?
It was widely reported that Michael Prescott’s leaked memo – which kicked off this whole controversy – raised concerns about “systemic problems” of bias in some of the BBC’s coverage.
So, it was very interesting to hear his response to whether he thinks the BBC is institutionally biased. He was fairly emphatic about it. “No, I don’t.”
Prescott makes it clear that his concern was more that there were “incipient problems” and that the BBC wasn’t tackling those as it should.
He
says: “The root of my disagreement and slight concern even today is that
the BBC was not – and I hope they will change – treating these as having
systemic causes. There’s real work that needs to be done at the BBC.”
We’ll await to hear what other senior figures say about that later in this session.
If some members of the board believe that the BBC does suffer from systemic bias, and others do not, then it’s not clear where this ends.