BBC chief says sorry for N-word in news report

Boss’s U-turn after 18,500 complaints from public

BBC director-general Tony Hall has finally apologised for a news report which contained an offensive racist slur.

The corporation received more than 18,500 complaints from the public after social affairs correspondent Fiona Lamdin repeated the ‘N-word’ used in a racially motivated attack on an NHS worker in Bristol.

The BBC initially defended the report, but in a statement to staff yesterday, Lord Hall said the corporation ‘now accepts that we should have taken a different approach at the time of broadcast and we are very sorry for that’.

He added: ‘Every organisation should be able to acknowledge when it has made a mistake. We made one here.

‘It is important for us to listen – and also to learn. And that is what we will continue to do.’

Lord Hall said the corporation would be ‘ strengthening’ its guidance on ‘offensive language’ across its output.

The story ran on the BBC News Channel and local news programme Points West on July 29.

The corporation initially defended the use of the word, saying the victim’s family had asked it to report the racist language ‘in full’ and pointing out that it had warned viewers the report would contain offensive terms.

But yesterday – 11 days later – the outgoing director-general admitted mistakes had been made.

He said: ‘It should be clear that the BBC’s intention was to highlight an alleged racist attack.

‘This is important journalism which the BBC should be reporting on and we will continue to do so.

‘Yet despite these good intentions, I recognise that we have ended up creating distress among many people.’

The statement was issued after Lord Hall, who is being replaced by BBC Studios chief executive Tim Davie next month, held a meeting with colleagues on the issue.

On Saturday, BBC Radio 1xtra presenter Sideman, whose real name is David Whitely, said he was quitting the corporation over the broadcast.

Announcing the move on social media, he said the news report represented an ‘error of judgment’, adding it ‘feels like a slap in the face to our community’.

The BBC said it had received 18,656 complaints over the incident.

Channel 4 News presenter Krishnan Guru-Murthy praised Lord Hall for his statement, adding: ‘But once again it has taken a direct intervention by the director-general to overturn a mistake on race previously defended by the BBC’s editorial policy managers.’ Larry Madowo, a US correspondent for the BBC’s World Service, also commented on the statement, saying he had previously not been allowed to use the racist term in an article when quoting a black person.

‘But a white person was allowed to say it on TV because it was “editorially justified”,’ he added.

Amid the growing controversy, the BBC aired the ‘N-word’ again repeatedly on Saturday evening, on Radio 4.

On the LOLs on LPs programme edited and hosted by comedian and children’s author David Walliams – in the Archive on 4 slot at 8pm – he played an excerpt from a comedy show by 1970s and 1980s black comedian Richard Pryor.

Walliams claimed that Pryor’s ‘frequent and uninhibited’ use of ‘ the N- word’ had ‘ positively reclaimed’ it ‘for black people to use themselves’.

After saying, ‘I can’t warn you enough the language is very, very, very, very strong’, Walliams played a recording of Pryor saying at a live show: ‘Good god... a lot of n*****s here today.’

‘Distress among many people’