{"id":260332,"date":"2025-11-13T11:16:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-13T11:16:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/260332\/"},"modified":"2025-11-13T11:16:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-13T11:16:08","slug":"bbc-director-general-who-are-the-candidates-and-will-anybody-want-the-job","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/260332\/","title":{"rendered":"BBC director general: Who are the candidates, and will anybody want the job?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The full story of what exactly precipitated the downfall of the BBC’s director general and his CEO of News is probably still emerging.<\/p>\n

But one part of it, to my mind, isn’t in question: Tim Davie’s explanation that one of his main reasons for resigning was the human toll that five years in the job (and, presumably, particularly the difficult, error-filled past year) have had on him.<\/p>\n

In his resignation email to staff<\/a>, he wrote of “the very intense personal and professional demands of managing this role over many years in these febrile times”.<\/p>\n

On a human level, it’s relentless. But there are plenty who – perhaps understandably – have little sympathy for the outgoing DG.<\/p>\n

They point out that the job is highly remunerated (it is), brings many perks with it (it does) and that there were just too many mistakes on his watch.<\/p>\n

Every time a story has blown up (most recently, two Gaza documentaries, Bob Vylan at Glastonbury, and now a misleading edit of a presidential speech), I have immediately been messaged by journalists outside the BBC. The question is always the same. “Surely this time the DG has to go?”<\/p>\n

Whatever the arguments over individual crises, we live in a ‘hunting for a scalp’ media culture.<\/p>\n

And when it comes to finding Davie’s replacement, the words of the BBC chairman Samir Shah have stayed with me.<\/p>\n

“This is not an easy job to fill, it really isn’t,” he told staff on Tuesday. “And I have to be honest, the way we as a country attack people, really personally, is not good. <\/p>\n

“Why would somebody want to do this job if that’s what they face? We’re asking a lot of a director general.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The full story of what exactly precipitated the downfall of the BBC’s director general and his CEO of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":260333,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[96,391,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-260332","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-tv","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=260332"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260332\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/260333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=260332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=260332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=260332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}