Hosted by Christina Ruffini and Sir Richard Dearlove
Guest
Episode Summary
In this episode of One Decision In Brief, hosts Kate McCann and Sir Richard Dearlove, former head of Britain's MI6, discuss the BBC's latest crisis after President Donald Trump threatened the broadcaster with legal action over their January 6 documentary. The BBC's coverage of issues such as Israel's role in the war in Gaza, trans rights, climate change, and more have come under fire, forcing top executives to resign. Plus, the hosts examine Vladimir Putin's close aid, foreign minister Sergei Lavrov's recent withdrawal from the public and what that signals about Russia's leadership.
Episode produced by Situation Room Studios. Original music composed and produced by Leo Sidran.
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Transcript
INTRODUCTION
Mccann: Hello, and welcome to One Decision In Brief. I'm Kate McCann joined today by my co-host, Sir Richard Dearlove. Hi, Sir Richard. How are you?
Dearlove: I'm very well, Kate. Very well indeed.
Mccann: It's good to see you again. Look. There's loads for us to talk about today in this In Brief episode. We've had to slim this down, but I thought that one of the biggest things that's happening here in the UK that has huge resonance in the US too is this story about the BBC, so should we kick off with that?
THE BBC CRISIS
Dearlove: Yeah, it really is quite extraordinary the way it's escalated in the last forty eight hours.
Mccann: It really has. I mean, people who are joining us from further afield, the BBC Corporation, it's the public service broadcaster here in the UK and it's paid for via a license fee, so essentially every household here has to pay, I think it's around £170 a year in order to watch the news, listen to the radio, watch catch up, things like that. So in sort of payment for that, I guess, the BBC's end of the bargain is that it's an impartial broadcaster. It's not allowed to express any opinions. And over the last couple of months, it's got itself into hot water on a number of different occasions. A lot of this comes down to foreign reporting, and there's been some accusations of bias, anti-Israel bias, pro-Gaza bias. There've been a couple of documentaries for example where one of the subjects, in fact the voiceover for the documentary, was found to be the son of a Hamas official in Gaza. So, you know, clearly some problems there, but Sir Richard, the big news here in the UK in the last twenty four hours is the Director General, so the big boss of the BBC Tim Davie, and the Chief Executive of News Deborah Turness, they've both resigned, and they've resigned because of Donald Trump's frustration essentially. I mean, they say that it's relating to other issues, but Donald Trump seems to have been the final nail in the coffin.
Dearlove: Well, I think you're right, and the problem for them is that because it's what Trump said, it's become really potent as a political issue in a way maybe that the accumulation of other issues over a long period of time haven't pushed the issue to crisis point. But if you look at the report, the report was an internal report which was leaked to a British newspaper done by a senior journalist who put together all this material, and there's a sort of accumulation of evidence on a whole range of issues, as you've mentioned already, including transgender issues and Brexit for that matter. And I mean, I can speak a little bit from my own experience because the BBC, you know, I was a reasonably prominent Brexiteer. I would say, actually, pretty prominent Brexiteer because not many people with my background stood in that position on the issue. I gave one brief interview to the BBC at which they said, oh gosh, you know, we don't usually — they actually said this to me during the interview, you know, we don't usually air those sorts of views on the BBC because they were so opposed to Brexit. I was quite shocked, and after that they studiously avoided me and would never ask me for interview. So, I think it's a problem. I mean, okay, that's a minor side issue as it were, but it's something that's been going on for a long time, and it's got to a point, I think, where many of us feel that it's a serious problem that has to be tackled by the BBC itself, and of course it raises the whole issue. Should we be paying — everybody be paying this very large sum of money for the license fee to sustain their funding? Of course, there has been the same issue in the States with PBS, which has also had a setback since Trump came to power, if I'm right.
Mccann: Yeah. And I think, you know, you mentioned it's accumulation of issues, and you're right, there was a sense that the BBC had been very anti-Brexit, that the BBC had a specialist team of reporters who were there to report about trans rights and issues about women and feminism and gender, but that those journalists, and this is in a leaked report, had been essentially shutting down anybody who didn't want to report those issues from a very pro-transgender point of view, so only giving one side of the conversation. And you know, same question about Israel and Gaza, you know, a sense overwhelmingly in the organization that there is a right point of view, and the right point of view is that Israel is fully to blame, and that, you know, essentially coming down incredibly hard on Benjamin Netanyahu's government, and you know there are many people listening to this who feel that what Israel is doing is wrong, and we've discussed on here about, you know, the issues of war crimes and crossing of red lines, but from an institution that is supposed to be balanced and impartial, to have that inherent built-in sense of what's right and wrong is and has been deeply worrying for many people. The final straw we're talking about is a documentary which was made by the BBC's Panorama program, a flagship documentary program, and in it journalists had spliced together two ends of a Donald Trump speech, I think it was about fifteen minutes between these two clips, and they'd shunted them together with no obvious edit in the middle, and so if you were listening to it you would think that this was all said in one breath. Let's try and have a listen to what the BBC put out in that documentary. NEWS CLIP [5:54] We're gonna walk down to the Capitol, and I'll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don't fight like hell, you're not gonna have a country anymore.
Mccann: Now that's the clip that the BBC played of Donald Trump's speech, which they've now admitted shouldn't have been edited in the way that it was. And it prompted the president to accuse the BBC of editing his perfect speech — he posted on Truth Social about it, deeply, deeply upset. And it has, as I say, prompted the resignation of two of the most senior people in the organization, and now a complete meltdown inside the BBC. But Sir Richard, it also looks like Donald Trump might even try and sue the BBC for what its journalists have done.
Dearlove: Exactly. Well, I mean, that's the sort of Trump standard reaction, isn't it? You know, he threatens lawyers, whether he actually goes through with it or not. Because, I mean, he did that to — I'm trying to remember the name — in relation to, so the famous, I mean it is a sort of characteristic Trump behavior. He probably, in my view, whether he actually goes ahead with that or not, it's rather demeaning for him to do that and it's probably unnecessary. But, you know, I can think of other examples of the BBC not enjoying views that did not coincide with their sort of liberal metropolitan position on many, many issues. Try telling the BBC that climate change is not anthropomorphic, and try telling the BBC that there is an alternative scientific view about carbon dioxide as a gas. I know people who, as it were, hold an outside position or a different position on climate change. Are they allowed to express that on the BBC? Absolutely not. It's regarded as a complete total heresy and a dangerous heresy, so they have no mouthpiece, whereas in my view there should be a balance, there should be a proper debate about the science, which isn't 100% as the BBC likes us to believe. So, you know, there are many, many different aspects to this.
Mccann: Yeah, and with politicians, you know, growing in sort of voice, I suppose, the right, at least in the US and here in the UK, Reform UK led by Nigel Farage, Donald Trump of course, the President, you know, those kinds of voices pointing out where they think things are going wrong and being very willing to talk openly about where they see bias in a way that potentially we haven't seen before. I think that does put pressure on news organizations in two directions, in the sense that we do need to make sure impartial broadcasters stick to the rules, and all broadcasters have to adhere to the rules in this country and there are rules in the States, but in different ways. But I also think it means that journalists need to be more confident and robust when we talk about fake news and when we talk about what we know to be true, because in a world where people can go on, you know, politicians, very senior politicians can go on online, where they can even create their own social media structures. People are looking to them for news now, and there's no verification of that. It's direct from the horse's mouth to the voter, and in some ways that might be a very good thing, but in others it can be a very dangerous thing. You know, we see that in countries like China and to an extent Russia. And I think, you know, obviously we're not talking about the same thing in the US and the UK, but the more you erode trust in news organizations, the harder it is for people to feel confident in their political representation, and that has an impact on democracy.
Dearlove: Yeah. The other evening I was watching a newscast. It was Newsnight, which is one of the main late night news programs in the UK on the second channel. And there was an interview with the guy who's currently, not Farage, but the guy who's president of —
Mccann: Zia Yusuf.
Dearlove: Zia Yusuf. And it was an outrageous interview because it was not an attempt to, as it were, allow him to speak and explain. It was a pure hatchet job, and in a way, if you've got the number of people that are voting for Reform in the country and they are the lead party by a mile at the moment, an interview like that should, as it were, give the guy an opportunity to talk and to explain. And everything he said was attack, attack, attack, attack, and, I mean, that's characteristic of the way things are going at the moment.
Mccann: And that's what Donald Trump has almost used to his advantage in the States, you know, this accusation that you don't get a fair hearing, that the press don't want to treat his government fairly, they don't want to tell people what he's doing, and he's using that to his advantage, he's using that to undermine trust in media organizations, and to some extent maybe he has a point, and that's certainly the debate that people are now having about the BBC here in the UK. There certainly are some questionable reporting practices in Russia, shall we say. What's the issue that stuck out for you this week?
PUTIN'S INNER CIRCLE AND THE LAVROV QUESTION
Dearlove: Well, I'm puzzled by the apparent disappearance from Putin's side of Lavrov, the foreign minister who has been around for such a long time. There now seems to be this rumor or expectation that Lavrov will not attend the G20 meeting which is coming up in South Africa. I think there is a particular problem with South Africa in regard to Putin and the International Court of Justice because South Africa have played the International Court of Justice a big deal on the issue of Hamas and Israel, and what are they gonna do? Putin's been indicted by the ICC, and if he turns up in South Africa strictly speaking, he should be arrested. Of course, that won't happen, but maybe they're worrying about who would be on the delegation because of that legal difficulty. But has Lavrov disappeared or not? I think there was a feeling that he was far too prominent in the Alaska meeting and that he stole some of Putin's thunder. If that were to be the case, maybe Putin's decided that he should be pushed aside, but it would be a big deal if he's in the process of disappearing from the Russian international lineup because he's been such an important figure right back to the time when he was the Russian perm rep at the United Nations in New York.
Mccann: Oh, he's a hugely important figure, isn't he? And he's been around front and center, as you say, for many, many years now, and the suggestion is that he missed a high level meeting with Putin, and as you say, he won't be leading the Russian delegation to the G20 summit. He was expected to do so, but Putin has signed a decree appointing a more junior official. So, I mean, evidently there is something going on there. The question is whether, as you say, it's a shake up the order of things around President Putin for one reason or another, or whether there is something more, well I suppose more personal going on, there's always that question isn't there, about whether there's something going on personally.
Dearlove: He is quite old and he looks pretty unhealthy, so it may just be that the man's ill, but, you know, typically in Russia, they wouldn't necessarily tell us that, but let's see how it plays out. I think, you know, Kremlin watching and China watching in terms of who says what to whom and how they line up on the platform, it's still a fascinating subject of discussion. It's a bit esoteric, but I'm used to that from the Cold War where you interpreted any sign you saw.
Mccann: It is, and it's always an interesting one for us to keep an eye on, so we'll continue to do that. Sir Richard, good to chat to you. Great, Kate. All the best. That's it for this week's Decision In Brief, and of course, be sure to stay tuned for our regularly scheduled episode coming this Thursday. We love your comments and questions, by the way. If you want to leave us any feedback, you can. There's plenty of places you can do it. 1decision.com or our YouTube page where you'll find all our Shorts, Explainers and our full-length episodes. Thanks for listening. I'm Kate McCann joined by Sir Richard Dearlove.
