00:00I think the BBC is the most scrutinised media organisation in the country.
00:04From my experience at the Financial Times, it was a very different level of public scrutiny.
00:10It's scrutinised obviously by this committee, by members of the public, by editorial complaints, by its audience.
00:17And obviously there are many ways to make a complaint to the BBC.
00:21But in my experience, are there times when they're necessarily defensive on some issues in that context?
00:26Yes. But as a broad sort of characterisation, I would say I did not find the BBC to be defensive.
00:32I found the BBC to be actively engaged in discussions about how to improve issues of partiality on very complicated subjects.
00:39And this is a live, dynamic debate when the context changes all the time.
00:42It's very hard. It's not one and done. This is obviously a live debate.
00:46I think there can be differences of opinion about whether the BBC went far enough on some of the issues that were raised in the committee.
00:52And some of the issues that were raised were significant issues.
00:54But actually what's important is that the BBC were raising them themselves.
00:59They were coming up via the EGSE commissioning research from David Grossman to help facilitate that robust debate and that review of impartiality.
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