BBC in crisis?

It is the biggest and most recognised news network in the world. For decades, the publically funded British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has been a journalistic standard bearer.

But it has been a difficult time for the BBC. A decision by BBC flagship current affairs show, Newsnight, to drop a story about one of their most celebrated broadcasters, Jimmy Savile, who had been accused of sexual abuse, unleashed a cascade of events that led to the resignation of its director general, George Entwistle.

Listening Post‘s Flo Phillips unravels the bad press the BBC has given itself. We speak to media experts Stewart Purvis, who ran the television news agency ITN; New Statesman journalist and Al Jazeera presenter Mehdi Hasan; Tim Luckhurst, who was a news editor at the BBC; and Nathalie Fenton.

“The BBC has been reminded in the last few weeks that whilst it does many things to entertain the British public, whilst it does many things to educate them, its primary responsibility is to inform and that means that the jewel in its crown, its journalism, is also its Achilles heel. If the BBC is to be trusted, respected and admired as it is, by the British public and around the world, then it must at all times maintain rigorous scrutiny and the highest conceivable standards in its journalism both at home and abroad.” Tim Luckhurst, a former news editor at the BBC