Board of Deputies President Phil Rosenberg has released the following statement following the resignations of BBC Director General Tim Davie and CEO of News Deborah Turness.
He said: “After last night’s resignations at the BBC, the response so far from some in its newsroom, and even from its Chair, have not been encouraging.
“There still seems to be a culture of ‘circling wagons’ rather than grasping the opportunity to restore the organisation’s credibility by acting on systemic bias and group-think.
“While the BBC Chair Samir Shah has today apologised for some of the issues in the Prescott report, he has continued to be in denial about the aspects of that same report that speak to the BBC’s bias in relation to its coverage of the Israel-Hamas conflict and its attitude on antisemitism.
“This includes the alarming allegation – said to be in David Grossman’s internal BBC Report – that BBC Arabic has used a contributor who referred to Jews as the ‘devil’ 522 times. Meanwhile over 200 of the BBC’s Jewish staff and contractors have written to the Corporation to express their dismay that their concerns over antisemitism are not being taken seriously.
“Promises to launch an independent thematic review of their coverage of the BBC’s Israel-Hamas conflict, and to get a grip of the taxpayer-funded BBC Arabic have so far gone unfulfilled.
“If we are to believe change at the BBC is possible, there needs to an acknowledgement and apology, both to the Jewish community and to the country as a whole, for the wider issues raised by Prescott. The BBC should also release the Grossman report, which Prescott referred to, without delay, so that the public can fully understand the scale of this challenge and consider and appropriate response.
“If the BBC is to get out of this hole, it must stop digging. The BBC must not waste the opportunity it has been afforded to get its house in order.”