The producer who was, until recently, at the heart of the BBC’s political coverage has criticised director general Tim Davie’s failure to “really understand journalism” and lamented fresh threats to the standard of the broadcaster’s current affairs analysis.
Rob Burley claims that an element of the BBC’s core purpose, the interrogation of politicians and scrutiny of policy, is now being “pretty much thrown away”.
Speaking to the Observer this weekend Burley, who previously produced the BBC’s live politics output, including The Andrew Marr Show, has attacked the corporation for losing many of its seasoned, heavyweight interviewers and for recent “arrogance” displayed in the public conflict with football presenter Gary Lineker.
“Clearly things have been very badly handled,” said Burley. “They’ve lost a lot of good political presenters. I don’t know if there is much BBC expertise along those lines left in the building. The funding cuts are real and hard decisions have to be made, but Tim Davie doesn’t really understand journalism, in my view, and so has waved through lots of these cuts.
“At the same time, many of those politicians who are crying about the loss of local radio journalists are the same people who pushed for the original BBC funding cuts in parliament.”
Burley’s candid new book Why is This Lying Bastard Lying to Me? revealed last week that BBC board member Robbie Gibb had told him to step away from investigating the promises made to the electorate by Brexiters.
Burley now feared, he said, that the BBC’s clash with Lineker in March over a tweet attacking government immigration policy was a damaging repeat of mistakes made in dealings with veteran political broadcaster Andrew Neil.
“The attitude of BBC leadership and Tim Davie reminded me of what happened with Andrew. He had his new BBC Wednesday evening political show established – a longform interview – which they then axed and instead offered him some sort of unfixed, occasional slot.
“Whether you liked Neil or not, he had a particular value to the BBC because he isn’t the kind of person the corporation is mainly made up of. He has come from a business background and does not have the same liberal allegiances. There were lots of other reasons why he was valuable too, of course, but this one was particular to him. And, of course, he then left for GB News and is now with Channel 4.
“So I feel there was a certain arrogance there that I saw with the attitude to Lineker, who Davie seems to have thought would just fall into line. He did not realise the level of support that Lineker would get from all the other sports presenters.”
Burley, who is now a producer at Sky News and makes interview shows fronted by its political editor, Beth Rigby, said his book was intended to entertain, while also “making the argument about the value of lengthier interviews”.
“It is a key part of a democracy and the BBC has pretty much thrown it away,” he said. “They seem to have lost a lot of those people, as well their faith in the idea. They don’t believe viewers want it.”
On the claim, detailed in his book, that Gibb, a No 10 aide to Theresa May, had tried to divert him from investigating the government’s claims about the financial benefits of Brexit, Burley added: “I was quite straight about it in the book, and I don’t believe that Robbie has contradicted my version. In fact, he has repeated his line that it was important to ‘move on’ and not to just re-litigate Brexit.” At the time of the referendum Gibb was editor of the BBC’s live politics programmes.
“I remember that after the Brexit vote I bounded into his office, saying: ‘Now we’ve got to look at all the Brexit campaign claims,’” recalled Burley. “And it seemed pretty sensible to examine things, including, of course, the £350m claim on the bus. So I was quite surprised by what Gibb said to me.
“I mean, I understood that the truth of the actual claim is quite complex to unpick, because the source of NHS funding is hard to define, but that’s not the point.”
Gibb has since justified his view that Brexit promises were a dead issue. “£350m was not a lie at all. It’s just campaigning. Nobody ever says: ‘What about Labour saying you’ve got 24 hours to save the NHS?’ – but when it’s about Boris Johnson, they do. So I just have no truck with it,” he has said.
Gibb’s views were, in fact, ignored, Burley concedes, and the Vote Leave battle bus claim was investigated by the BBC. “Generally, I don’t believe the BBC has a big problem with bias: although there is always potentially an ‘incumbency bias’, in favour of the government, which you have to guard against. Any politician who is in charge has quite a lot of leverage, with allowing access and setting the agenda.”
Burley agrees that viewers’ trust has been shaken by the recent inquiry prompting the departure of BBC chairman Richard Sharp, the Tory party donor linked to organising a loan for Johnson, especially when taken together with Gibb’s seat on the board and Davie’s historic involvement with the local Conservative party politics. But he said he sees it as a problem with perception rather than a real danger.
“I don’t believe Robbie Gibb is going to try to influence everything, and I was surprised by that one example, which is why I described it in the book,” he said.
