The BAFTAs were held on February 22nd. The actual awards were overshadowed by the BAFTA organization making a series of ghastly mistakes, all around a man named John Davidson. Davidson has Tourette’s and he’s a Tourette’s activist. His life story inspired one of the BAFTA-nominated films, I Swear. That’s why Davidson was invited to the BAFTAs. Instead of ensuring that other BAFTA guests and nominees wouldn’t have to withstand his involuntary tics, including homophobic and racist abuse, BAFTA instead seated Davidson close to a microphone and they did nothing as he hurled the n-word at Wunmi Mosaku, Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo on-stage, and shouted the same word at Hannah Beachler as she left the ceremony. BAFTA officials did not check in with Hannah, Wunmi, MBJ or Delroy, and they only apologized 24 hours later, after the incidents became an international controversy.
The whole thing was made infinitely worse when one of Davidson’s racist tics was left in the BBC broadcast – people could hear, clear as day, Davidson shouting the n-word at Delroy and MBJ. The BBC left the slur on their iPlayer for nearly 24 hours before finally editing it out. Warner Bros executives also tried to tell BAFTA organizers that all of this was unacceptable and Davidson’s slurs needed to be edited out of the broadcast. To be clear, none of this, from start to finish, should have happened. The larger fault was with BAFTA, although the BBC absolutely f–ked up too. Well, BAFTA still hasn’t released any information about their internal investigation, if they’re even doing one. But the BBC had an update on their situation:
The broadcast of a racial slur that was shouted during the Bafta Film Awards breached the BBC’s editorial standards, the corporation’s executive complaints unit (ECU) has ruled. A Tourette syndrome campaigner shouted an involuntary racial slur while actors Michael B Jordan and Delroy Lindo were presenting one of the categories at the event in February. The shout was not edited out of the subsequent TV broadcast, which aired on BBC One on a two-hour delay, and the ceremony remained available to stream on iPlayer until the morning after.
On Wednesday, the BBC’s chief content officer Kate Phillips said the ECU “found this should not have made it to air and it was a clear breach of our editorial standards”. However, she noted, it also “found the breach was not intentional”.
The ECU received “a large number of complaints” about the BBC’s Baftas coverage, and upheld those relating to editorial standards on harm and offence. Last month, outgoing director general Tim Davie said the BBC “profoundly regrets” what happened, adding that the team editing the ceremony had not heard the word and did not intentionally leave it in.
The ECU’s findings said: “The ECU found that the inclusion of the n-word in the broadcast (which was also streamed live on iPlayer) was highly offensive, had no editorial justification and represented a breach of the BBC’s editorial standards, but that the breach was unintentional.”
Phillips explained that “the production team did not hear the n-word at the time it was said and therefore no decision was taken to leave the word within the broadcast… The ECU accepted this was a genuine mistake, especially as the team did correctly identify and edit out a subsequent use of the same word, in line with the protocols that were agreed in advance of the event regarding offensive and unacceptable language.”
The ECU said leaving the coverage on iPlayer until the Monday morning was also a “serious mistake” and breached guidelines.
“The fact that the unedited recording remained available for so long aggravated the offence caused by the inadvertent inclusion of the n-word in the broadcast,” its report said. Phillips said: “There was a lack of clarity among the team present at the event as to whether the word was audible on the recording. This resulted in there being a delay before the decision was taken to remove the recording from iPlayer. The ECU has been clear that this was a serious mistake and commented that the fact the unedited version stayed up overnight made the severe impact of the inadvertent inclusion of the n-word worse.”
Phillips said the BBC “must learn from our mistakes and ensure our processes are as robust as they can be”, and set out measures to improve pre-event planning, production at live events, and the iPlayer takedown processes.
I know the full story now, which is that BAFTA did inform the BBC that they needed to edit out the slur, but the BBC team got confused because Davidson also shouted the n-word at Wunmi Mosaku. The BBC team thought they had successfully edited out the slur in question, not realizing that Davidson was still loudly ticcing racist slurs in the auditorium and that everyone heard the word when it was directed at MBJ and Delroy. So, f–kups all around, and the BBC absolutely deserves the criticism. But as I said, the BAFTA org screwed up much, much worse.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images. Screencap from ABC News.
