The BBC's own watchdog is calling foul over the airing of the n-word during February's BAFTAs broadcast. The corporation's Executive Complaints Unit has ruled that airing the slur—said to have been involuntarily spoken by Tourette's campaigner John Davidson as actors Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo presented the first award—violated the BBC's rules on harm and offense, per Variety. The show went out on a two-hour delay, prompting backlash over why the moment wasn't cut from the program, especially as part of a speech mentioning "Free Palestine" was.
Chief content officer Kate Phillips said the ECU concluded the airing of the slur "was highly offensive, had no editorial justification, and represented a breach of the BBC's editorial standards," but was unintentional. The production team reported that they hadn't heard the slur during the taping and therefore didn't try to censor it. Phillips noted the team "did correctly identify and edit out a subsequent use of the same word" in accordance with protocol. The ECU also concluded that keeping the unedited broadcast available to stream on iPlayer until the morning after the awards ceremony was a "serious mistake" that made the situation worse.
Phillips said she had apologized directly to Davidson, Jordan, Lindo, and fellow Sinners actor Wunmi Mosaku, who noted the episode had "tainted" her win for best supporting actress. As for the editing out of director Akinola Davies Jr.'s "Free Palestine" comment, the ECU concluded it was not an issue of partiality. Instead, it concluded "the principal consideration was that approximately three hours of recorded material had to be edited to fit a two-hour transmission slot," per the BBC. The speech given by Davies and his brother Wale was ultimately cut down from 2.5 minutes to one.
,
uBlock 
,
and
Ghostery 
)
