Good morning. In 2004, when Greg Dyke quit the BBC in the wake of the Hutton inquiry, a much younger me was at the beginning of my media career, working at BBC Online. I remember staff felt the relatively popular director general had been the victim of the government lashing out after the death of David Kelly, and a failure to produce convincing evidence of the fabled weapons of mass destruction that supposedly supported Tony Blair’s decision to invade Iraq.
Many BBC staff will no doubt have been feeling a similar grievance after the abrupt resignations of director general Tim Davie and head of BBC News Deborah Turness on Sunday. They departed after a week of concerted attacks on the organisation orchestrated by the rightwing press and figures closely associated with the Conservative party – particularly Boris Johnson’s administration.
