BBC staff complain over Munchetty reprimand for Trump remark

[Eugene]

Source: The Guardian

BBC staff complain over Munchetty reprimand for Trump remark

Complaints unit ruling against Naga Munchetty comes amid concerns broadcaster falls short on diversity issues

Jim Waterson Media editor
Thu 26 Sep 2019 13.39 BST
First published on Thu 26 Sep 2019 12.49 BST

BBC staff have publicly turned on their employer after the Breakfast show presenter Naga Munchetty was found to have breached the corporation’s editorial guidelines after criticising Donald Trump for telling black politicians to “go home”.

Munchetty was ruled to have overstepped the mark when she put comments by the US president in the context of racism. Furious staff have pointed out that the complaints unit is dominated by older white men who may not understand the true impact of Trump’s words.

“Every time I have been told, as a woman of colour, to go back to where I came from, that was embedded in racism,” Munchetty told viewers in July, during a discussion with her co-host Dan Walker. She went on to add that she was “absolutely furious a man in that position thinks it’s OK to skirt the lines by using language like that”.

Sangita Myska, a BBC correspondent, said “there is a lot of bewilderment among BAME staff” about the decision, while the former China editor Carrie Gracie has said the ruling was perplexing given “telling the truth and celebrating diversity” is a core BBC value and “we speak out when something is not right”.

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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/sep/26/bbc-staff-complain-after-colleague-reprimanded-over-trump-remarks

[muriel_volestrangler]

1. BBC reverses decision on Naga Munchetty complaint

The BBC's director general Lord Hall has reversed a decision to partially uphold a complaint against Breakfast presenter Naga Munchetty.

He told staff that Munchetty's words were not "sufficient to merit a partial uphold" of the complaint against her.
...
On Monday, the director general reiterated that "racism is racism and the BBC is not impartial on the topic".

The reversal of the decision comes after dozens of black actors and broadcasters called on the BBC to overturn its decision.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-49883952

The attempts to explain the complaints unit's decision never made sense. As far as I can tell, they were interpreting "impartial" to mean "you must never criticise any politician, even a foreign one, even when they say something we agree is racist".