00:00The apologizing is for the way the team edited President Trump's speech to his supporters
00:09on January the 6th.
00:11It was public.
00:12We discussed it.
00:13Indeed, the reservations and some people on the board felt very strongly it was wrong.
00:20Others defended it.
00:21It was discussed at Panorama, so they knew about that.
00:25But I think the point I'm making is, in hindsight, we should have acted earlier and taken a more
00:31formal position on it, which we've done more recently.
00:35Part of the problem is the way it was edited, but what was the consequence of that?
00:40I think we just needed to go into a bit more detail, which is what we finally did, which
00:45was the impression it left on the British audience, as opposed to the intention of the programme
00:51was to give the British audience some understanding of how President Trump's supporters were reading
00:58it.
00:59Now, that's quite a complicated set of thoughts, and we need to get that right.
01:05Let's be clear about the role of the board.
01:06We are a non-executive board.
01:08Ten of us are non-execs, four execs.
01:10The job of the board is to review BBC output and to maintain and to represent the public interest.
01:16It is not our job to determine who or who should not be the director of news.
01:21That is the job of the director general.
01:23It is for him to say and for him to determine.
01:27And that's the only position I take and I insist that the board takes.
01:31I did not want to lose Tim Davie.
01:34I think Tim Davie has been an outstanding director general.
01:38And may I say, nor did any member of the board.
01:41We were upset by the decision.
01:45I do understand it at a very human level.
01:48Tim has gone through a lot of attacks.
01:51It's been relentless.
01:52It's also a very, very difficult job.
01:56We do take it really seriously.
01:57I mean, there are real issues here.
02:00They're over a three-year period.
02:03And just let me say, the BBC in those three years has produced hundreds and hundreds of
02:09hours of outstanding journalism on television, on audio, on online.
02:15We have and we do a great job there.
02:18But inevitably, we make mistakes.
02:20And what he's identified are mistakes, either individual ones or ones that point to underlying
02:25problems, which we accept.
02:27The statistics say that the British people trust BBC News more than anything else.
02:32If there was this consistent institutional bias, do you think we'd have those figures?
02:37We wouldn't.
02:38So I don't think that's right.
02:41That's not to say that there aren't real problems, real issues, both underlying and specific.
02:49I don't think there's a systemic bias in anti-Israel.
02:51I mean, there are loads of arguments that suggest almost the opposite, you know.
02:56I think that we have issues, as we have to put underlying problems, and we've made changes
03:05in leadership to try and deal with that.
03:07But I think, you know, it's worth talking about the scale of the BBC and how much it does,
03:14and how much excellent, impartial journalism it does.
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