Much of what former Newsnight presenter Emily Maitlis said in this week’s annual MacTaggart lecture will have been reassuringly familiar to self-described moderates.
Right-wing populism is a threat to independent journalism, she said, as is populism on the Left. Sometimes BBC journalists strive too hard to be balanced and they are too reticent about the impacts of Brexit. All quite predictable.
But Maitlis also levelled some more surprising criticisms at the BBC, including a claim that an “active agent of the Conservative party”, Robbie Gibb, has become “the arbiter of BBC independence” from his position on the BBC’s board. She also referred to a Financial Times report of attempts by Gibb to “block the appointments of journalists he considers damaging to government relations”.
