Tackling the crisis legacy 

CRJ’s advisor Amanda Coleman highlights lessons from the recent BBC turmoil on building trust and reputation in her latest blog for Under Pressure.


Image by Nathan J Hilton | Pexels

The biggest issue this week has been the turmoil at the BBC, with the sudden resignation of its director general, Tim Davie, and head of news, Deborah Turness, over a dispute about how to handle allegations of systemic bias in the corporation’s news coverage of the US election, Gaza, and diversity issues.

I am not going to go over the issues of what is happening now, as there are many others that have already shared their views. Instead, I have been musing about how they rebuilt trust and if, in fact, they can achieve that.

One of the biggest challenges for the BBC is the legacy of problems that they have experienced. It is hard to think of a time in the past decade when they weren’t making headlines themselves because of events and the way they handled them. All these issues have a cumulative effect and make it more likely for other issues that arise to have a greater effect. It is the ‘Velcro’ effect in action: problems continue to stick.

Organisations can often be so large that without effective systems and processes that are monitored and reviewed all the time, they fail to identify problems early. In addition, making changes is not a simple thing either and takes many years. So what can it do? I listened to the Radio 4 media show discussing this issue during the week and have had a chance to speak to some ex-BBC journalists. What is clear is this isn’t easy.

The BBC needs to refocus on what it does and how it approaches its work. Rebuilding trust and its reputation is going to take time and will be through a consistent series of small steps. Achieving this is going to be difficult while its every move is being analysed in detail, and it has become a political football. It needs to have the right people in place with the vision for the future. During my career, I have had run-ins with the BBC, but I hope that it survives and regains the confidence to be the public service broadcaster needed and definitely needed when emergencies happen.

Read the original piece here.