BBC director-general Tim Davie has answered questions from the U.K. government’s Culture, Media & Sport Committee over the incident that erupted following the BAFTA ceremony in which the shouting out of a racial slur was aired despite the broadcast being on a two-hour time delay.
In what has unfortunately come to overshadow the 2026 awards, John Davidson, the Tourette’s campaigner and inspiration for film “I Swear,” made the involuntary outburst while “Sinners” stars Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo presented the first award of the night. The incident sparked a firestorm of anger, much focussed on the BBC for not removing Davidson’s tic from its broadcast.
In a letter to committee chair Dame Caroline Dinenage, Davie sought to explain the events of the evening to clarify why the N-word outburst was not edited out, asserting that it was a “genuine mistake, and we take full responsibility for our error.”
Davie said that the BBC’s “initial evidence gathering” found that no-one in the on-site broadcast truck heard the initial when they were watching the live feed. “Because no-one in the broadcast truck was aware it was on the live feed, there was therefore no editorial decision made to leave the language in,” he said.
However, he noted that a second outburst of the word occurred while Wunmi Mosaku accepted her best supporting actress award.
“In that instance, the edit team did hear the racial slur on the feed and removed it immediately from the version of the ceremony that would be broadcast later that evening. This was in line with protocols and procedures that were in place for this event.”
The mistake occurred, he claimed, when the edit team started received reports about a racial slur, “including from BAFTA.” He said: “Our understanding at this point is that the team editing the show in the truck mistakenly believed they had edited out the incident that was being referenced, on the basis that they had heard and edited out the slur shouted out during the best supporting actress award. Therefore, when they were told a racial slur had been shouted, they believed they had removed it.”
Answering the question of what steps the BBC would take to prevent a similar incident happening again, Davie acknowledge the length of time, understood to be around 15 hours, between the realization that the initial incident had been aired and the ceremony on the BBC’s iPlayer being taken down to edit.
“We are now looking in more detail into why we did not pick up sooner that there had been two instances of the use of the racial slur, and why, post the broadcast, further action was not taken to edit or remove the programme from iPlayer,” he said. “The BBC will learn lessons from this incident and ensure appropriate action is taken to avoid such an incident happening again.”
