BBC Director General explains “serious mistake” that led to Baftas racial slur incident
The BBC Director General, Tim Davie, has explained how a racial slur remained in the online broadcast of the Baftas ceremony in a public response to UK Culture, Media and Sport Committee Chair Dame Caroline Dinenage.
On February 22nd, Delroy Lindo and Michael B Jordan were presenting the first award of the night at the British awards ceremony, when Tourette’s campaigner, John Davidson, shouted the N-word toward the stage as a result of an uncontrollable tic.
Despite a two-hour delay between the ceremony taking place and the edited recording being uploaded to the streaming platform iPlayer, the racial slur was left in the initial recording.
After facing a huge wave of backlash, which led to the removal and re-upload of the re-edited footage, BBC’s executive complaints unit announced that an official “fast-tracked investigation” had been launched into the “serious mistake”.
Now, in the new letter, the BBC has explained that it made a “serious mistake” which it takes “full responsibility for”.
The letter began, “I want to assure you that the BBC profoundly regrets the events around the broadcast of the BAFTAs on Sunday 22 February. The BBC has apologised for the serious mistake that was made, in allowing a racial slur to be broadcast and then remain on iPlayer overnight and into Monday morning. We understand the hurt and shock that the mistake caused.”
Davie added, “I’d like to make clear: although the racial slur was symptomatic of a disability and an involuntary tic, it should never have been broadcast. It was a genuine mistake, and we take full responsibility for our error.”
Davie explained that the team on-site simply did not hear Davidson’s slur. However, they did hear his racial slur tic against Wummi Mosaku within ten minutes of the first incident.
Davie added, “Our understanding at this point is that the team editing the show in the truck mistakenly believed they had edited out the incident that was being referenced, on the basis that they had heard and edited out the slur shouted out during the Best Supporting Actress award.”
He explained, “Therefore, when they were told a racial slur had been shouted, they believed they had removed it.”
The Director General said that their investigation will continue: “We are now looking in more detail why the team did not ascertain sooner that there had been two instances of the use of the racial slur, and why post-broadcast further action was not taken to edit or remove the programme from iPlayer sooner.”
He added, “The BBC will learn lessons from this incident and ensure appropriate action is taken to avoid such an incident happening again.”
Davie is on his way out of the role after announcing his registration in November due to the network’s editing of a Donald Trump documentary.
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