BBC Director General Tim Davie Blames Personal Error Not Financial Cuts For Heavily-Criticized Alan Dershowitz Interview
11.01.2022 - 21:13
/ deadline.com
BBC Director General Tim Davie has blamed personal error rather than swingeing cuts to its news team for last month’s heavily-criticized Alan Dershowitz interview, which came immediately after the guilty Ghislaine Maxwell verdict.
Questioned by a UK House of Lords Committee on what was to blame, Davie put the mistake down to a lack of due diligence carried out by the show’s planner and poor research, after the BBC failed to mention that Dershowitz has been accused of historic sexual abuse by Jeffrey Epstein accuser Virginia Roberts Giuffre. Giuffre has previously sued Dershowitz for defamation, which he subsequently counter-sued.
Dershowitz, who has also represented Harvey Weinstein and Donald Trump, used the interview to congratulate the prosecution in the Maxwell case for not calling Giuffre as a witness and, following a major backlash, the BBC had said it was looking into “how [the mistake] had happened” within hours.
Davie rejected the notion that the error, which took place on December 30, was a consequence of wider cuts to the news team or the impact of Covid-19 and praised the team for investigating swiftly.
“We admitted immediately it was in breach of editorial guidelines and straight away said it was a mistake,” said Davie. “We don’t make many mistakes of this nature and if we do we say very quickly. This was one notable miss versus the other 1000 things we do in a day.”
Just a day later, however, the BBC again landed itself in hot water when it interviewed Maxwell’s brother Ian Maxwell on its flagship Radio 4 news program Today, during which Ian Maxwell said Ghislaine Maxwell had had “nothing to do with” Epstein’s crimes and questioned the memory of her accusers.
Davie was speaking to the Lords committee on the topic