Emily Maitlis has lit up Twitter today after making a rousing speech about the BBC’s impartiality, Brexit and the failures of the government last night.
The former host of BBC Newsnight, who is now promoting her new podcast The News Agents, showed she has stepped away completely from the neutral line the BBC usually tries to maintain – and was widely praised for it on Twitter.
Speaking from Edinburgh’s international television festival, she hit out at a BBC board member who she claims is an “active agent of the Conservative party”, skewing its content by presenting himself as the “arbiter of BBC impartiality”.
This was a dig at Sir Robbie Gibb, who was appointed to the BBC’s board last year by prime minister Boris Johnson. He previously worked as Theresa May’s director of communications, and helped get GB News off the ground.
Maitlis took aim at the BBC’s attempts to “pacify” No.10 as well, after she publicly attacked Dominic Cummings – then Downing Street’s most senior aide – on air during a Newsnight segment.
She asked: “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 – less it was perhaps sending a message of reassurance directly to the government itself?”
The broadcaster also criticised the BBC’s tendency to fall into “both-sides-ism”, by giving air time to viewpoints which did not deserve it, particularly in the run-up to the 2016 EU referendum.
The broadcasting giant has for several years been accused of leaning towards the right, particularly as the Conservatives have repeatedly threatened to drop the license fee which means it would lose all its funding.
She said media is less willing to assert itself where “facts are getting lost, constitutional norms trashed, claims frequently unchallenged”.
And she’s not alone in thinking this, as seen from Twitter.
Her name quickly started trending. More than 12 hours after her speech, she was the third most popular trend on Twitter – and the vast majority of accounts supporting her and praising the journalist for sticking her head above the parapet.
Jon Sopel, who is Maitlis’ co-host on their new podcast, even called out the BBC for its reporting on her speech when it led on her Cummings’ comments rather than her impartiality concerns.