The BBC has attempted to reassure Jewish staff that discrimination against them will not be tolerated, after a former producer said she had faced antisemitism while employed at the corporation.
Rhodri Talfan Davies, the BBC’s deputy director general, met representatives from the broadcaster’s Jewish staff network on Tuesday following coverage of the case of Lucie Kon.
The former commissioning editor for the BBC’s Storyville documentary series was paid £400,000 by the corporation after her departure. Kon said she had faced antisemitism after the 7 October 2023 attack by Hamas. The BBC said its internal processes did not uphold her antisemitism claims, but has acknowledged “shortcomings, and the personal impact” on her.
The staff group is understood to have asked for a meeting after Kon’s claims. She stated in an interview: “The BBC isn’t full of antisemites, but it does have a problem with antisemitism.”
Her case has prompted calls for an independent inquiry from some MPs and former BBC figures including the ex-home affairs correspondent Danny Shaw.
While Talfan Davies did not accept an independent inquiry was needed, he pointed to new staff training on antisemitism, as well as internal attempts to build an inclusive culture inside the BBC. He is understood to have written to some Jewish staff members after media coverage of Kon’s case.
The issue has provided an early test for Talfan Davies, who was handed the deputy job to spot the kinds of crises that eventually led to the resignation of the previous director general Tim Davie.
Those crises included several disputes over the BBC’s Middle East coverage. The corporation apologised last year after a documentary about children in Gaza failed to disclose its child narrator was the son of a Hamas official. It was also criticised for dropping another documentary about medics in Gaza after concluding it “risked creating a perception of partiality”. The programme was later shown by Channel 4.
Talfan Davies said at an event earlier this week he did not think an independent inquiry into potential antisemitism at the BBC was necessary, as “we have very, very robust processes – we review them regularly”.
Responding to questions from journalists at a Broadcasting Press Guild lunch in London, the deputy director general said: “Of course in any large organisation there can be instances of discrimination, which you deal with when they arise, but there is no evidence of any systemic issue within the BBC that would merit anything like that.”
He added: “I don’t believe there is institutional discrimination of any sort in the BBC, but I think as an organisation you always have to look harder and review how you go about identifying issues, and that work is never done.”
Talfan Davies said the BBC had “taken enormous steps” to improve its workplace culture, such as introducing mandatory training and implementing the results of a recent review which focused on “calling out bad behaviour”.
“I don’t recognise a description of the BBC as in any way institutionally discriminatory,” he said. “But I also understand that the coverage of the last two weeks will have been difficult for our Jewish colleagues within the BBC and we need to talk to them and work with them to support them. But I think that’s different from believing that you have some sort of deep-rooted issue in the organisation.”
While the BBC has said that complaints about antisemitism were not upheld in Kon’s case, it has not explained the size of her payout. Talfan-Davies said he was unable to comment further for legal reasons, but said: “It didn’t relate to findings of antisemitism in the investigation.”
