It always hurts when a Tim gets disgraced, but if the scalp fits the hat, wear it. Tim Davie had to resign as Director General of the BBC, as did CEO of News Deborah Turness, because the litany of errors on their watch was so great as to indicate a cultural rot from the head down. That rot has put the very future of the corporation in doubt. The BBC’s whole business model was to stake its survival on being a paragon of honesty. If it is caught lying – this brazenly, this often – consumers will revolt.
The Corporation was already in the soup for protecting vast egos accused of very different things – Gregg Wallace, Gary Lineker, Huw Edwards – and for offering a platform for anti-Semitism, but the dossier of biases that recently fell into the Telegraph’s lap took things up a notch.
