“We believe the introduction we broadcast did not meet our standards of due impartiality.”
The BBC has said that an introduction on Newsnight on Tuesday night did not meet their “standards of due impartiality.”
Host Emily Maitlis has been replaced as the presenter for Wednesday night’s show by the broadcaster, first reported by The Guardian, after her monologue criticised the government’s handling of the Dominic Cummings’s lockdown trip to Durham.
She will be replaced on Wednesday by the Newsnight reporter Katie Razzall.
The entire story in 54 seconds. As told by Emily @maitlis pic.twitter.com/YfPC3lpLtx
— Tim Burgess (@Tim_Burgess) May 27, 2020
Maitlis said that Cummings, a senior advisor to Prime Minister Boris Johnson, had “broken the rules” and “the country can see that, and it’s shocked the government cannot”.
“The longer ministers and the prime minister insist he worked within them, the more likely the angry response to the scandal is likely to be,” she said.
“He made those who struggled to keep to the rules feel like fools, and has allowed many more to assume they can flout them.”
The BBC said in a statement on Wednesday that it had “reviewed the entirety of last night’s Newsnight, including the opening section”.
“While we believe the programme contained fair, reasonable and rigorous journalism, we feel that we should have done more to make clear the introduction was a summary of the questions we would examine, with all the accompanying evidence, in the rest of the programme,” it said.
“As it was, we believe the introduction we broadcast did not meet our standards of due impartiality.”
A petition calling for her reinstatement has received over 15,000 signatures in just over three hours.
Image via BBC Newsnight
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