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BBC boss will not resign over Queen gaffe

13/07/2007

The controller of BBC1 insists it would be a "disproportionate" response to hand in his resignation over the channel's misrepresentation of the Queen in a documentary trailer.

Yesterday the BBC and production company RDF Media unreservedly apologised for releasing a clip of a future programme that implied the Queen had stormed out of a photo shoot after a disagreement with US photographer Annie Leibovitz.

The short clip showed the monarch disagreeing with celebrity snapper Leibovitz over the removal of a tiara before making what appeared to be a hasty exit, complaining: "I'm not changing anything."

It later emerged that the clips had been edited together in the wrong order and that the Queen was in fact arriving for the photo shoot in the offending section.

Speaking this morning, Peter Fincham told BBC News: "It is a mistake that was made for which, as director of the channel, I take responsibility.

"If somebody above me – the director general of the BBC Mark Thompson – comes and says 'you should resign', then I will of course resign.

"But I think that's disproportionate and I hope this is something we can move on from."

Yesterday Mr Fincham said the release of the clip from A Year with the Queen, due to air this autumn, was the result of "human error".

"The scene as edited together gave us no reason to doubt that it was a reflection of what happened. There is nothing odd about it as you watch it," the controller told BBC Radio 4.

"So I was acting in good faith here, had no reason to do otherwise and obviously with hindsight had we known that these particular scenes were put together in the wrong order alarm bells would have rung."

Commenting on the row, former BBC chairman Michael Grade, now in charge at ITV, suggested that it was an example of young programme-makers who had "not been trained properly".

"It's desperately important that we restore trust and that the programme-makers get to understand, whether through hard lessons or through training or a combination of both, that you do not lie to audiences under any circumstances," he told the Today programme.

"Trust is the one thing that the broadcasters have going into the digital world which gives us a huge advantage and we dilute that at our peril.

"And I feel really sorry for the BBC because I think they've been deceived."

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