As Russian missiles fall on Ukraine, the death toll escalates in Gaza, and Iran’s Supreme Leader emerges from his bunker, BBC News executives have been distracted by a story closer to home.
The drama in and around the couch at the BBC Breakfast show has not made it on to the BBC News website. But it has capacity to damage public trust in an organisation that has rarely faced the breadth and scale of journalistic challenges currently before it.
BBC Breakfast’s star presenter, Naga Munchetty, and its programme editor, Richard “Fredi” Frediani, both find themselves accused of bullying. The pair appear to have fallen out and their respective supporters within the show’s staff are aggressively briefing against one another in the tabloids and trade press.
“Bully Naga in sex jibe storm,” ran a front-page story in The Sun last week. The film industry website Deadline carries allegations that Frediani is a “tyrant on the shop floor” who once “physically shook” a female colleague. He is on extended leave while such claims are investigated.
In comparison to the carnage in conflict zones, this story of modern working culture might seem trifling. Frediani is accused of kicking a waste bin. Munchetty is said to have made a crude remark in an off-air break. Both are seen as brilliant by some and bolshy by others. If such behaviour was alleged in almost any workplace beyond the BBC there would be minimal interest.
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And yet this story is toxic for the corporation because it also comes with implications of favouritism, double standards, management negligence and poor handling of talent. Such accusations jeopardise the wider credibility of the BBC in covering sensitive stories.
It also fans division within the BBC’s wider news operation. Deborah Turness, who has been trying to unify the BBC’s journalists since being appointed chief of BBC News in 2022, made her formidable reputation at the rival ITV News.
Her No 2, Jonathan Munro, is also an ITV veteran. Frediani, who joined the BBC in 2019, is a former head of ITV News, where he was a colleague of Turness and Munro, though neither is said to have been aware of complaints about his behaviour.
Allegations against Frediani appeared in 2020 when The Mail on Sunday reported on a “bullying culture” at BBC Breakfast. The corporation’s management is accused of failing to act, instead extending Frediani’s fiefdom to oversee BBC News at One, which like the morning show is produced in Salford.
The unseemly staff counter-briefing taking place in the tabloids has embroiled Munchetty, who is said to be one of Frediani’s accusers. It has created yet another talent crisis for the BBC, as her detractors claim she has not been held to the same standards as male BBC presenters.
This furore stems from a tension within breakfast television, which with its extensive mix of news and chatter is trying to be different things at the same time.
Sitting on the couch, presenters are required to generate visual chemistry with colleagues and project personality. So when news websites relentlessly clip TV content for social media clickbait, breakfast shows become telenovelas. Tabloids obsess over Munchetty and ITV’s Good Morning Britain (GMB) hosts Susanna Reid and Richard Madeley. They create “news” stories from their spontaneous comments or dress choices. It is a symbiotic relationship that helps to keep breakfast TV relevant for the TikTok generation.
Yet BBC Breakfast is also a news show. Under Frediani, a scoop-driven journalist (like Turness), the programme has been a success, winning a Bafta for a special report on the Post Office scandal and a Royal Television Society award for coverage of child food poverty.
Significantly, GMB, which trails BBC Breakfast in the ratings, is being brought within the wider ITV News operation and made “slightly more serious”, in a revamp by ITN that emulates its rival.
The broad mission of breakfast TV means it is staffed by a mix of hard-nosed journalists and others that simply want to work “in TV”. At BBC Breakfast there is another split along generational lines, with younger staff less prepared to stomach aggressive leadership. “Bloody snowflakes,” one old-timer complained to The Sun last week.
After BBC presenter scandals involving Tim Westwood and Russell Brand (both of whom deny wrongdoing), the director-general, Tim Davie, promised MPs a “zero-tolerance” approach to misconduct. He is undermined by any perception that a bullying crisis has been suppressed.
The BBC says it takes all complaints of misconduct “extremely seriously” and “has robust processes in place” to deal with them.
Decisive action is needed. For journalists across the corporation, BBC Breakfast’s current profile in other media must be as palatable as a bowl of cold porridge.
The organisation needs to get back to focusing on the front lines of news.
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