Writing in The Financial Times (15 November 2025), Chief Features Writer Henry Mance suggests that the BBC is “too big not to fail”, at least sometimes. Mance illustrates the scale of the organisation, with over 10 years’ worth of content on iPlayer alone. “Inevitably, there are mistakes,” he says. The article sets out the challenges of governance in particular, especially for a public institution so often in a political spotlight. A central point made is not that mistakes happen, but the “failure to correct it quickly”.
The article maps the various trials and challenges of successive Director Generals, and their Chairs, from the BBC’s inception, and through some of our most turbulent times. The Second World War, the General Strike, the miners’ strike, the Iraq war, migration and latterly responses to the American administration. A key strand is that party politics plays a strong hand, where some might argue it should not, in particular in its appointments of top executives.
What is particularly interesting for those leading organisations that have a distinct public service element, by example, education, charities, the media more generally and perhaps arts & culture organisations, is the discussion around impartiality, what that looks like, and how to get it.
Citing historian Prof David Hendy, from his book The BBC: A People’s History (2022), Mance draws out two distinct approaches to impartiality: one found through balance, the other through independent judgement. We’ve all heard the BBC quip, ‘other suppliers are available’.
Taking the first approach, ‘balance’ superficially appears to mean that oppositional ideas must also have their equal time in the sun. Where this becomes problematic is when, in the effort to be balanced, there is the implication that a minority view carries equal weight. Examples include climate science, populist politics, and to some extent the migration debate.
The second way forward, ‘independent judgement’, is favoured by investigative enquiry, where perhaps a more nuanced and balanced view can be more easily reached when emotion and popular opinion is given less sway than the evidence: facts over opinion. This is hard to do, especially in institutions where vocational drive can be so emotionally charged.
Mance also points to the work by policy specialist Dr Madeleine Sumption, MBE, who was commissioned by the BBC’s board to assess the impartiality of the BBC’s coverage of migration (March 2024). Finding, unsurprisingly, that the topic is “technically complex, emotional and contested”, the report also found that, while reporting standards were high, there is a tendency for too narrow a political lens, focused on a small number of high-profile people.
All of the above might easily be levelled at how boards can sometimes fall into narrow decision-making models. One of Sumption’s findings is that the more intense or prominent viewpoints can sometimes carry more sway. This is echoed in the Charity Governance Code that also advises boards to balance evidence from a range of stakeholder perspectives, "not just the loudest or the most persistent". At Bvalco we see time and again that the best boards continually seek to improve the quality of decision-making by trying not to fall foul of biases and irrational behaviour in this way (see table below for how the Sumption report maps against the Charity Governance Code for ways to avoid this).
Sumption offered a number of key points to improve impartiality from the position of independent judgement, and they mirror much of the changes to the recently published update to the Charity Governance Code 2025.
This is how they compare.
| Feature / Theme | Charity Governance Code (CCG) | BBC Review of Migration Impartiality |
|---|---|---|
| Organizational Focus & Goal | The Code sets out universal principles of governance for charities. Good governance helps charities achieve their goals. Meeting the principles provides strong assurance that a charity is well governed. | Assesses the impartiality and accuracy of BBC content on migration. Provides practical guidance to help the BBC improve its coverage in areas like context, story selection, and reflecting viewpoints. |
| Foundational Structure | Based on eight principles (e.g., Organisational Purpose, Leadership, Ethics and culture, Decision making, Managing resources and risks, Equity, diversity and inclusion, Board effectiveness). It is a practical tool for trustees. | Focuses on multiple dimensions of broad impartiality, addressing challenges that point in multiple directions. Critiques found are typically not zero sum. |
| Expertise, Learning, and Capacity | Trustees must invest time and care in understanding their responsibilities and legal duties. They must commit to continuous learning and staying up to date with regulatory changes and advice. The board must have the right mix of skills, knowledge and experience. Includes resources for trustee induction and development activities. | Many problems result from a lack of specialist expertise on migration, time, or confidence among journalists. BBC News should protect and develop more migration expertise. Journalists need the resources and subject-specific expertise to analyze political claims assertively. Better mechanisms for passing knowledge between experts and generalists are needed. |
| Diversity and Representation | Equity, diversity and inclusion is a core principle. The board must draw on a range of diverse backgrounds, experiences and expertise to enhance decision making. Trustees are expected to seek out and value diverse opinion. Recruitment processes for the board should be open. | Coverage must reflect the full range of perspectives on migration. The perspectives and voices of migrants themselves are often missing entirely. Staff should have a wider range of backgrounds and political opinions to avoid groupthink. |
| Transparency and Openness | The board must communicate about its work to internal and external stakeholders. Trustees must be open about how the organisation and its governance works. Trustees must identify and manage conflicts of interest. | Coverage should be transparent about the editorial choices involved. Journalists should define the migration terms they use more often, as technical distinctions are often unclear to audiences. |
| Depth vs. Superficiality/Context | The board must balance evidence from a range of stakeholder perspectives, not just the loudest or the most persistent. Activity must be targeted at achieving aims both in the short and long term. | The most common problem is telling migration stories through a narrow political lens, reporting what high-profile people are saying without really getting under the skin of the issue. Audiences need more context and explanation. Coverage often seeks narrow ‘balance’ by quoting soundbites, rather than delving into justifications and evidence. The BBC should be bolder in story selection, going beyond the political agenda. |
| Handling of Risks and Difficult Topics | The board identifies key risks and agrees how to navigate them. It ensures control and risk management frameworks are effective. Complaints and concerns are handled fairly and used as opportunities for learning and improvement. | Coverage sometimes neglects topics like immigration fraud or local concerns about migration, as journalists were anxious about taking on topics they felt could appear hostile to migrants. Impartiality requires covering difficult topics respectfully and factually. |
| Strategic Resource Allocation | The board takes responsibility for stewarding, developing and allocating resources. It ensures the charity optimizes resource use to fulfil current and long-term aims. | The ability of journalists to fully interrogate claims and find interesting stories is limited by lack of time. The BBC should think carefully about how time is allocated to different stories to allow more space for analysis and context. |
A strong running similarity is that both organizations are challenged by superficial engagement: the CCG cautions boards against listening only to the loudest stakeholders, while the BBC Review finds journalists often settle for the easiest political soundbites instead of the substantive debate. Both solutions involve a commitment to proactive learning and specialized resources to navigate complexity and maintain integrity.
These core similarities are perhaps useful guiding lights for all boards, and not just those with a public mission:
· A commitment to evidence and context.
· Valuing and seeking diverse expertise
· Ethical conduct and transparency
· Focus on substantive purpose
· Empathetic engagement with stakeholders.
The question is, how?
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