Who are they kidding? BBC hails huge success in impartiality

The BBC boss hailed the broadcaster for the quality of its news content as he gave evidence to a House of Lords committee. He said he had implemented a "clear policy" for journalists to remain impartial on social media in 2020 that had yielded results over the past 12 months.

Davie told the Communications and Digital Committee: "It's very straightforward, though.

"We believe the number of issues we've had from journalists over this year are very limited.

"If we see those issues, we take action. We have taken action.

"We don't talk about individual cases but we will take action where someone has breached our social media policy in journalism.

"Those issues among journalists are mercifully very, very low now."

Davie told peers he would not publish the names of which journalists had been disciplined for breaking social media guidelines but he would look into whether he could publish the number of incidents there had been.

Speaking on accusations of bias more widely, the director-general said he believed licence fee payers would be "impressed" at the level of impartiality shown by the broadcaster if they sat in an internal meeting.

He said: "I come from a strange point of view that if everyone sat in the editorial meeting at the BBC or got closer to the BBC they would be impressed by the quality of debate, the thinking that goes into some of the storytelling, and the real values that we're trying to deploy into our thinking around impartiality."