Glastonbury and the BBC: time for a change?

"Death, death to the IDF." The broadcasting of the incendiary chant by hip-hop punk duo Bob Vylan at the Glastonbury Festival on Saturday has thrown the BBC into turmoil.

Many are asking how the set went out live without any editorial oversight or intervention and then remained available to watch on iPlayer for five hours before it was taken down. There's "a feeling" that the incident might very well "mark the end of Glastonbury as televisual experience", said Nick Hilton in The i Paper.

'Too slow to act'

BBC bosses "were confident" that by deciding not to livestream Belfast rap group Kneecap, "they had headed off the day's only controversy", said Anita Singh in The Telegraph. But "nobody appeared to have done due diligence on the act appearing directly before Kneecap on the West Holts stage".

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I'm told due diligence was done on Bob Vylan, said Katie Razzall, culture and media editor at the BBC. But "it's the BBC's reaction as the set unfolded, and the perception it was too slow to act, that is a bigger problem". And, with it now confirmed that BBC Director General Tim Davie was at the festival and was made aware of what was being chanted, that problem seems bigger still.

"Letting Bob Vylan go out live and unfiltered was a shocking editorial failure," one BBC insider told Adam Sherwin at The i Paper. "They are supposed to monitor the live feeds. Someone should have cut it straight away. Senior heads should roll."

'Shoot the messenger'

"There are significant murmurings within New Broadcasting House that the current lavish broadcast of the festival has had its day," said The i Paper's Hilton.

The BBC's decision, in the mid-1990s, to partner with the festival and then, 15 years later, stream multiple acts simultaneously on iPlayer, has "unlocked live music for a population who wouldn't dare brave the raucous atmosphere on founder Michael Eavis' dairy farm". It has also "exposed the BBC to its least favourite commodity: risk".

"The BBC certainly has questions to answer" about this year's coverage, said former BBC presenter Roger Bolton in The Independent. Those responsible should be disciplined "but we are also in danger of straying into 'shoot the messenger' territory".

A full investigation is a "waste of time and money", said Melanie McDonagh in London's The Standard. For "the stupid performer," it would "gratify his self-regard enormously"; for the BBC, "it would be dignifying incompetence as malice".

It's "simple", said Finn McRedmond in The New Statesman. "Glastonbury needn’t apologise, and the BBC has bigger things to worry about than broadcasting bad music by admittedly unpleasant but staggeringly banal rappers."