Analysis: BBC president survives MP’s questions, but crisis is not over

If you had tuned into the Culture, Media and Sport committee hearing on Monday expecting a gladiatorial showdown, you would have wondered where the swords were.

There have certainly been occasions when Select Committee hearings felt worthy of the Colosseum in Rome, with parliamentarians grandstanding and landing blows.

After a turbulent two weeks of a BBC crisis, with pressure on him, Samir Shah looked nervous as he began his session in front of MPs.

But after about ten minutes, the president seemed to relax. That may have been the moment he realized that these MPs did not come equipped for mortal combat. There would be no fatal blows.

The key for Shah and the BBC was for him to demonstrate that he controlled the corporation. He was asked twice if he should have resigned. He said his job now is to “steer the ship” and begin the search for the next CEO.

Caroline Thomson, a board member sitting next to Shah, said she had the board’s unanimous support.

He neglected to mention board member Shumeet Banerji’s resignation on Friday, citing “governance issues.”

That obviously increased the pressure on Shah before his appearance at the committee, and this is the part of his evidence where it came to life.

While he praised Banerji, he rejected the feeling that the former board member had not been consulted about the events that led to the resignations of News CEO Tim Davie and CEO Deborah Turness.

Shah claimed – twice – that he had had a 26-minute conversation with Banerji.

The BBC chairman arrived at his session with MPs in a rather weak position, accused of losing control over his board of directors.

It seems to have come out stronger. If the BBC wanted to show unity, it succeeded. After two weeks in which we heard of divisions at the top (including claims of a fracture between the news division and the board, as well as accusations that the board itself is divided), the three members of the BBC board presented a united front.

It certainly wasn’t fascinating television.

Media regulator and former BBC journalist Richard Ayre did not mince his words, especially regarding the length of the session.

“About four hours ago – it feels like four years ago – I started by saying that this seemed a bit like an episode of The Traitors, and the question would be who would be the next person to bite the dust,” he told BBC News when the session ended.

“I believe that after having attended these two interrogations by the parliamentarians, the answer is that there will be no banishment tonight and they will both come down to breakfast tomorrow morning.

“Over the last two weeks we have received countless reports in the media of tensions within the BBC board… And yet the picture we got… today was all peace, all light: everyone has complete trust in each other.”

Journalist and former BBC presenter Andrew Neil was also unimpressed.

“My immediate thought is that I’ve spent more interesting afternoons watching paint dry. I mean, this is a low-level committee. The Watergate hearings were not,” he told BBC News.

“The quality of the questions was appalling, they lacked forensic focus, they were uninformed, some of them could barely string six words together into a coherent sentence.

“Those hoping to get the scalp of the chairman, Samir Shah, or… the non-executive director, Robbie Gibb, or to discredit Michael Prescott, the author of the report that caused all the problems, will be sorely disappointed because no one really laid a glove on them.

“And if the BBC was worried that this might have been the start of a disappearing process, then it should have a big gin and tonic tonight, because nothing happened to cause any harm.”

But we got some ideas.

Shah was asked about the vacuum created by not apologizing for Donald Trump’s misleading edit once it became public in the Telegraph newspaper.

He suggested that he had not accepted the apologies suggested by news executives because they were not sufficient.

Caroline Thomson, sitting next to him, described it as a “marked and continuing difference of opinion between the chairman and myself and other members of the board with the news director”. He said it was a question of whether to apologize for the editing or whether the impact of the editing had given a misleading impression. Some board members felt so.

We also hear for the first time from Sir Robbie Gibb, former BBC executive and Downing Street communications chief under Theresa May, who is one of the board’s political appointees.

Some have accused him of political interference.

On Monday he denied it, saying it has become a weapon and that he has impartiality in his bones.

And when Sir Robbie was asked directly whether there had been a politically motivated coup, as some people had suggested, he said it was a ridiculous accusation, complete nonsense and offensive to board members.

Whether that is enough to calm the critics is another question.

Michael Prescott, whose leaked memo sparked all of this, also spoke for the first time.

He said he did not believe the BBC had an institutional bias. But the Committee did not get to the bottom of the accuracy of his claim about systemic problems in the way the BBC works. That still looms over him.

Caroline Daniel, the other former adviser who participated in the same meetings as him, did not reach the same conclusion. They didn’t ask him many questions, but his answers were direct.

He said the BBC takes issues of impartiality incredibly seriously. “That’s why they are the most trusted news brand in the world.”

To take a step back, every single person who testified today professed great support for the BBC.

But given the divisions and errors that have been exposed in recent weeks, leading to major resignations at the BBC’s top leadership, as well as the legal threat from Donald Trump, this crisis is not over.

Shah lives to fight another day, but with the BBC under siege, another day is sure to come when another problem arises.