The BBC’s bizarre n-word controversy

There are a lot of problems with the BBC’s output, but anti-black racism is almost certainly not one of them. And yet, this is more or less what the corporation has been accused of in the still rumbling controversy over a BBC News report’s use of the n-word.

More than 18,000 people have complained about the piece, which was broadcast on Points West and the BBC News channel on 29 July. BBC Radio 1Xtra dj Sideman has resigned in protest over it. A group of black female professionals has since called for a 24-hour boycott of all BBC content. And BBC staff are still busily tweeting their dismay.

Given all this, you’d be forgiven for thinking the journalist in question, BBC social affairs correspondent Fiona Lamdin, had launched into some racist, n-word-strewn diatribe, or perhaps jokingly started singing along to a rap song in the middle of an afternoon broadcast – blithely unaware that a white woman casually using that most ugly word would be a big deal.

Of course, she didn’t do either of those things. What she actually did was quote the word in a report on a brutal racially aggravated attack in Bristol, in which the attackers are alleged to have used it. A 21-year-old NHS worker and musician called K-Dogg was hit by a car, sustaining injuries including a broken leg, nose and cheekbone. According to the BBC, the family supported Lamdin’s use of the slur in the piece, hoping it would illustrate the full severity of the incident.

But apparently the desire of a journalist and a victim’s family to plainly present the facts of a suspected racist attack is irrelevant. The BBC, having originally stuck by the report, has now said it was a mistake and apologised. ‘The BBC now accepts that we should have taken a different approach’, wrote director general Tony Hall in an email to staff. Inevitably, this statement has been met with outrage that he didn’t cave in sooner.

Of course now that they've issued an unwarranted apology for reporting the news accurately the neo-hisbah will be coming at them twice as hard. When will people learn that chumming the waters doesn't calm sharks?