Prescott, a former independent adviser to the BBC\u2019s Editorial Guidelines and Standards Committee, catalogued allegations of bias in the news department. Among his findings were concerns about reporting on the Israel-Gaza conflict.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m used to reading rants from all sides of the divide, and I expected another rant,\u201d Grade says. \u201cI read it, and I realised there was real substance to the criticism and the accusations contained in it.\u201d<\/p>\n
He wrote to BBC chairman Samir Shah seeking assurance that the board had read the report and was taking its findings seriously.<\/p>\n
What particularly concerned him was the history of major BBC scandals being exposed from outside rather than uncovered by the corporation itself.<\/p>\n
He points to the Martin Bashir interview with Princess Diana and the documentary Gaza: How To Survive A Warzone<\/a>, which centred on a young boy who was revealed to be the son of a Hamas minister.<\/p>\n \u201cWe the public, the licence fee payers, would never have known about them unless outside journalists had exposed it,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n \u201cIt wasn\u2019t the BBC owning up to their mistakes. It had to be exposed by outside people, which is a shocking indictment of an organisation that calls on everybody else to be transparent and accountable and open.\u201d<\/p>\n The longest section of Prescott\u2019s report concerned the World Service\u2019s Arabic-speaking network, BBC Arabic.<\/p>\n Prescott concluded that the service had attempted to \u201cpaint Israel as the aggressor\u201d and that allegations against the Jewish state were \u201craced to air\u201d without adequate editorial checks.<\/p>\n Grade says there had been \u201cclear signals that there were problems in the Arab service\u201d and criticises the BBC for being \u201cvery, very slow\u201d to respond. \u201cIt was absolutely shocking how slow they were to acknowledge it,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n He does not want BBC Arabic scrapped, and believes in what he sees as its crucial role as \u201cthe one free and impartial news purveyor for that region; it is so important.\u201d Grade is hopeful that the language service will improve because those in charge understand they are under scrutiny.<\/p>\n \u201cThey know they got it very wrong [and] they\u2019ve got to put it right,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n The wider question is how the BBC covers a conflict in which access to the opposing sides is radically unequal.Grade describes Israel-Palestine as \u201cthe most incredibly difficult subject to cover\u201d.<\/p>\n Israel, he says, is a democracy and is \u201cconfident enough in itself to put spokesmen up on every occasion\u201d, willing to take questions and answer criticism. But Hamas and Hezbollah offer no comparable access.<\/p>\n \u201cSo there\u2019s an immediate imbalance in the coverage because all you\u2019re hearing at these press conferences is quite correctly journalists from the BBC and everywhere else calling the Israeli government or military to account for stuff that\u2019s happened or may have happened or is reported to have happened and so on.<\/p>\n \u201cSo you get wall-to-wall criticism because of that.\u201d<\/p>\n Grade is the only person to have led all three of Britain\u2019s major broadcasters: Channel 4, where he was chief executive from 1988 to 1997; the BBC, where he was chairman from 2004 to 2006; and ITV, where he was executive chairman from 2007 to 2009. He was\u00a0 chairman of Ofcom from 2022 to 2026.<\/p>\n Speaking from his home on the Isle of Wight, Grade recalls the 2006 independent review of the corporation\u2019s coverage of Israel and Palestine<\/a> that he commissioned following the 2004 Balen report into the same subject, which Grade never read.<\/p>\n There had been criticism in some parts of the community that the Balen report should have been published, but Grade disagrees.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was not for the public or the Board, it was for the journalists themselves,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n The report he commissioned subsequently concluded that the BBC risked creating a \u201cmisleading picture\u201d by failing to use the word \u201cterrorist\u201d. It said the term should be used to describe violence against civilians intended to cause terror, \u201cwhether perpetrated by state or non-state agencies\u201d.<\/p>\n Decades on, the BBC\u2019s decision not to describe Hamas as terrorists on October 7 and in the days afterwards was, he says, \u201cmisleading\u201d.<\/p>\n He believes resistance to the term comes in part from the World Service, who he says \u201cwould argue that it can be regarded as being partial if you use that word in certain countries.\u201d<\/p>\n But Grade rejects the idea that impartiality requires neutrality towards terrorism, and remembers an appearance on the Today programme when he was BBC chairman. Presenter James Naughtie asked him about the use of the word after the Madrid train bombings in March 2004, when 10 bombs exploded on four trains, killing 191 people and injuring more than 1,800.<\/p>\n \u201cI said in certain circumstances, it is accurate,\u201d Grade recalls. \u201cThe people that have perpetrated that horror in Madrid, if they\u2019re not terrorists, I don\u2019t know what they are.\u201d<\/p>\n His answer produced two very different reactions.\u201cOn the way out of the studio, Jim Naughtie put his arm around me. He said, \u2018I\u2019m so glad you said that, it\u2019s driving us mad.\u2019 And then I got a stream of abuse from journalists in the World Service saying I didn\u2019t know what I was talking about.\u201d<\/p>\n Those two reactions, Grade says, were \u201cinteresting\u201d. Twenty years later, he thinks the corporation has failed to heed its own findings. \u201cThey continue to refuse to use the word terrorist, which I personally think is wrong,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd I\u2019m supported by that report.\u201d<\/p>\n While Grade has strong criticisms of the BBC, he is particularly complimentary about Samir Shah.<\/p>\n \u201cA seriously good chairman for the BBC, a very fine journalist who I\u2019ve worked with over the years and I have every confidence that he will steady the ship and sort things out,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n But Grade does think the BBC should change the way it handles complaints, with the Editorial Complaints Unit<\/a> (ECU) reporting to the board rather than to editorial management.<\/p>\n \u201cThe ECU should report to the board, not to management, because management are responsible for pay and rations.<\/p>\n \u201cThere should be no way that the complaints unit should be marking their boss\u2019s homework.\u201dA board subcommittee overseeing the ECU could provide greater independence, he thinks.<\/p>\n