Emily Maitlis has said the BBC’s board includes an “active agent of the Conservative party” as she issued a warning about her former employer’s impartiality.
Maitlis singled out Robbie Gibb, Theresa May’s former communications director, as she used the annual MacTaggart Lecture at the Edinburgh TV Festival to criticise BBC bosses.
Gibb, who helped to found the GB News channel, was appointed to the BBC’s board by Boris Johnson’s government last year.
Maitlis, who left the broadcaster this year for rival media group Global, alluded to his influence as she criticised how the BBC “sought to pacify” Downing Street by issuing a swift apology for her Newsnight monologue about Dominic Cummings.
She outlined the BBC’s response to the 2020 Newsnight episode in which she opened by saying Cummings, then Johnson’s chief adviser, had “broken the rules” with a lockdown trip to Durham and “the country can see that, and it’s shocked the government cannot”.
The broadcaster received more than 20,000 complaints and ruled Maitlis breached impartiality rules, saying in a statement: “We believe the introduction we broadcast did not meet our standards of due impartiality.”
Maitlis said the programme initially “passed off with a few pleasant texts from BBC editors and frankly little else”.
She said: “It was only the next morning that the wheels fell off. A phone call of complaint was made from Downing Street to the BBC News management.
“This – for context – is not unusual. It wasn’t unusual in the Blair days – far from it – in the Brown days, in the Cameron days. What I’m saying is it’s normal for government spin doctors to vocalise their displeasure to journalists.
“What was not foreseen was the speed with which the BBC sought to pacify the complainant. Within hours, a very public apology was made, the programme was accused of a failure of impartiality, the recording disappeared from the iPlayer, and there were paparazzi outside my front door.
“Why had the BBC immediately and publicly sought to confirm the government spokesman’s opinion? Without any kind of due process? It makes no sense for an organisation that is admirably, famously rigorous about procedure – unless it was perhaps sending a message of reassurance directly to the government itself?”
In a reference to Gibb, Maitlis added: “Put this in the context of the BBC Board, where another active agent of the Conservative party – former Downing Street spin doctor and former adviser to BBC rival GB News – now sits, acting as the arbiter of BBC impartiality.”
Maitlis quoted Angela Rayner, the deputy Labour leader, who has said his appointment represented “Tory cronyism at the heart of the BBC”.
The journalist also highlighted what she described as the “normalising” of populist ideas by the media.
Referencing both former US president Donald Trump and the Brexit debate, Maitlis described her “thesis” as being that both “political actors” and politics itself have changed but journalists are yet to catch up.
Maitlis, who joined the BBC in 2001 and presented Newsnight from 2006 until earlier this year when she announced her departure, also claimed journalists are now self-censoring to avoid “backlash” for their work.
In February, she and Jon Sopel announced they were leaving the BBC to join Global, where they are hosting a new podcast, titled The News Agents, and a radio show together on LBC.
A BBC spokesperson said: “The BBC places the highest value on due impartiality and accuracy and we apply these principles to our reporting on all issues.
“As we have made clear previously in relation to Newsnight we did not take action as a result of any pressure from Number 10 or government and to suggest otherwise is wrong.
“The BBC found the programme breached its editorial standards and that decision still stands.”