The BBC’s director general told staff the corporation should be proud to be progressive, The Telegraph can reveal.
In a leaked recording, Tim Davie said the BBC walked a “joyous tightrope of the culture wars”, and said “being progressive” was something staff “should be proud of”.
He made the remarks during an online question and answer session with employees, in which he said the corporation was “fair and balanced technically in terms of impartiality” in its coverage and did not have “party political bias”.
However, critics of the BBC reacted angrily to Mr Davie’s comments, which came to light after The Telegraph acquired footage of the meeting in January 2021, claiming they amounted to a political position.
In the recording, a BBC employee told Mr Davie there was “a real perception out there that we haven’t done enough to tackle impartiality, that we need to ‘de-woke’,” and asked him: “How would you respond to that?”.
Mr Davie said: “We do a reasonably good job of walking along the joyous tightrope of the culture wars where, being progressive, diverse, doing the things we should be proud of, is not woke. But meanwhile, we’ve got to make sure that we are clearly representing views from across the board.”
Responding to The Telegraph’s findings, a BBC spokesman said the director general meant progressive “in relation to areas like market-led technological change” and that “any other interpretation is wrong”.
Dame Priti Patel, a former Home Secretary, told The Telegraph: “The BBC once again have serious questions to answer over their political bias and culture.
“The public expects this taxpayer-funded broadcaster to be impartial, balanced and fair. But these latest revelations show they are obsessed with promoting a liberal metropolitan elitist agenda that most of the country disapproves of.”
Richard Tice, the leader of Reform UK, said: “Tim Davie’s comments confirm how deeply embedded Left-wing ideology is at the BBC. These comments prove the BBC is not fit for purpose and should be immediately defunded.”
Robin Aitken, a former senior BBC journalist, said: “A progressive groupthink dominates the BBC, including its director general. BBC people simply don’t seem to understand that not everyone shares their opinions and that to social conservatives the consensus BBC view on social issues and concepts like ‘diversity’ is itself controversial.
“For Tim Davie to say the BBC is proud to be progressive is to take a firm, and controversial, political position. It suggests he has a very poor understanding of what true impartiality looks like. If the BBC is, as he claims, a ‘progressive’ organisation, that inevitably excludes those, like me, who don’t identify as progressive.”
Mr Aitken said that “directly contradicts the BBC’s core mission, which is to accurately reflect all shades of opinion, not merely those of progressives”, adding: “Inadvertently, the director general has highlighted the scale of the problem he faces if he intends real reform at the corporation.”
Under its Royal Charter, submitted to Parliament in 2016 and subject to an updated framework agreement in 2022, the BBC is committed to “reflecting a wide range of subject matter and perspectives across our output as a whole and over an appropriate timeframe so that no significant strand of thought is under-represented or omitted.”