What Emily Maitlis alleged about ‘active Tory agent’ on BBC board

Emily Maitlis has set tongues wagging by claiming that a BBC board member is an “active agent of the Conservative Party” who is shaping the corporation’s news output by acting “as the arbiter of BBC impartiality”.

The former Newsnight presenter’s claims were dismissed by the BBC, which insisted that it “places the highest value on due impartiality and accuracy”. But Maitlis has also received praise for calling out “the BBC’s endless Tory propaganda”.

What did Emily Maitlis say?

Delivering the prestigious James MacTaggart Memorial Lecture at the Edinburgh TV Festival on Wednesday, Maitlis spoke of being at the centre of an impartiality row at the height of the pandemic.

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In 2020, she received what Metro described as “immense backlash” in response to a Newsnight introduction in which she stated that Dominic Cummings had broken lockdown rules by travelling to County Durham during the Covid pandemic.

The BBC received a complaint from No. 10, which Maitlis told the Edinburgh audience this week was not in itself unusual. However, she added, “what was not foreseen was the speed with which the BBC sought to pacify the complainant”, Metro said.

“Within hours, a very public apology was made,” said Maitlis, who left the BBC earlier this year to join Global. Newsnight “was accused of a failure of impartiality” and “the recording disappeared from the iPlayer”, she continued. But “why had the BBC immediately and publicly sought to confirm the government spokesman’s opinion without any kind of due process?”

She added: “It makes no sense… unless it was perhaps sending a message of reassurance directly to the government itself.”

Maitlis then pointed out that Robbie Gibb, who previously worked as Theresa May’s director of communications when she was prime minister, sits on the BBC board, where he acts “as the arbiter of BBC impartiality”, she said. Maitlis described Gibb as a “former Downing Street spin doctor and former adviser to BBC rival GB News” and “another active agent of the Conservative Party”.

She then accused the BBC of “both sides-ism” as a result of the corporation’s unflinching commitment to impartiality. “It might take our producers five minutes to find 60 economists who feared Brexit and five hours to find a sole voice who espoused it,” she explained. “But by the time we went on air we simply had one of each – we presented this unequal effort to our audience as balance. It wasn’t.”

How did the BBC respond?

In response to Maitlis’s no-holds-barred lecture, a BBC spokesperson said that the corporation “places the highest value on due impartiality and accuracy and we apply these principles to our reporting on all issues”.

And in response to the Newsnight controversy specifically, they added that the BBC “found the programme breached its editorial standards” but the corporation “did not take action as a result of any pressure from No. 10 or government and to suggest otherwise is wrong”.

Maitlis’s candid comments were praised by other broadcasters on social media. James O’Brien, radio host on LBC, which is owned by Global, tweeted that “speaking the truth in a time of universal deceit is a revolutionary act”. And Jon Sopel, the former BBC North America editor who is co-presenting a forthcoming podcast series with Maitlis, said she pulled “no punches” in her speech.

Gibb’s controversial appointment

Last summer, deputy Labour leader Angela Rayner complained about the appointment of Gibb to the BBC board. She tweeted that the “former No. 10 comms director Robbie Gibb” had been appointed to “try to influence the BBC to suit the government”, showing this proved “how Tory cronyism works”.

Business Insider reported that Gibb was on the board of a top Conservative lobbying forum but did not declare it in his declaration of personal interests when he joined the BBC. The news outlet said this breached the corporation’s rules, which state that individuals must declare “involvement in an organisation which could influence government policies or industry standards”.

Gibb was behind attempts to block the appointment of former HuffPost UK editor Jess Brammar to a senior editorial role at the BBC. He reportedly told the BBC’s former director of news and current affairs Fran Unsworth that the government’s “fragile trust in the BBC will be shattered” if the appointment went ahead. The FT reported that a person close to Gibb denied that he sent a message using those words.