Informed 12


Broadcasting BBC plunged into Panorama drama


BBC


Aſter the Bashir debacle, Ian Burrell reassesses the legacy of former BBC director general Tony Hall


When he stood down from the organisation last August, it was a relatively graceful departure. Not for him the fireball exit of his 54-day predecessor, George Entwistle, nor the politically-enforced resignations of previous BBC leaders such as Greg Dyke and Alasdair Milne. In a valedictory interview, Amol Rajan, then BBC media editor and now a Today presenter, concluded that Lord Hall had been “an effective DG”, working in the “toughest” circumstances. Tat record must be reappraised


following Lord Dyson’s withering indictment of Lord Hall’s “woefully ineffective” handling in 1996 of the lies and fakery perpetrated by reporter Martin Bashir to gain his era-defining interview with Princess Diana. Tony Hall’s failings have contributed to “one of the worst crises in the history


of the BBC”, says Paul Siegert, NUJ broadcasting organiser. “It’s a self- inflicted mess and I think it tarnishes Tony Hall’s legacy forever.” As head of news, Tony Hall deemed Bashir an “honest and honourable man”, despite clear evidence of forgery, and in 2016, when he had been promoted to director general, Bashir was re- hired as the BBC’s religious affairs correspondent. “At that time Blind Freddie and his dog knew what had happened in 1996 and it’s absolutely outrageous that he was brought back on staff,” says Pierre Vicary, president of the NUJ and father of the chapel in the BBC World Service newsroom. Facing criticism from the future king – Prince William effectively accused the BBC of playing a role in his parents‘ divorce and some part in the events that led towards his mother’s death – and a dismayed public, the BBC is having to review its editorial practices and investigate just how Bashir was brought back. Lord Hall, who quit his post-BBC job as chairman of the National Gallery because of this scandal, could face questioning from MPs. With hindsight, just how bad a director general was he?


Te task of running the national


broadcaster has changed. No one has matched the 11-year tenure of Lord Reith, who invented the job in 1921. For 10 of the first 12 DGs the role came with a knighthood but the last to receive such an honour was John Birt in 2000. Lord Hall of Birkenhead already had a peerage when he arrived in 2013, just before the organisation was to reel from the Jimmy Savile scandal which broke a year later. “Tony Hall had a lot of goodwill from his time as head of news so people were quite pleased when he was appointed,” recalled Paul Siegert. Te charismatic former Royal Opera House chief was “approachable” and staff felt


he was “in our corner” in a way that Mark Tompson, a previous incumbent, was not. Yet, when it came to negotiating with


government, notably over liability for licence fees for the over-75s, Lord Hall failed to show Tompson’s resolve. “Tompson told government that if they wanted him to do it, they would have to find a new DG, whereas Hall took a far weaker position,” says Pierre Vicary. “Many of us felt he was not strong enough.” Paul Siegert credits Hall for a lot of good


work in addressing gender-based pay inequality, noting that hundreds of NUJ female members had got pay increases. But he didn’t deal particularly well with legal challenges over fair pay brought by BBC presenters Carrie Gracie and Samira Ahmed. He oversaw changes to iPlayer that made it more relevant but hasn’t solved the problem of bringing young audiences back to the BBC, Siegert says. Pierre Vicary believes culpability for the “catastrophic” Bashir affair also rests with other senior BBC managers who brought the disgraced reporter back into the fold. “It’s admirable that Tony Hall has taken the consequences and resigned from his current job, but what many BBC journalists are outraged about is that none of the current senior management has shown the slightest inclination to follow suit.” While he is unhappy that Tony Hall embodied a BBC management culture which “appears to be in complete fear of whoever is in power”, Vicary believes his regime was less disastrous than that of an inveterate cost-cuter who took the knife to the organisation at a time when it faced less external competition. “Birt was, in my opinion, the worst DG we ever had because he ran the place like an accounting office, and journalism doesn’t work like that,” he says. “If we had a pantheon of the dreadful, he would be top of my list.”


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