Lyons defends BBC's right to take risks

Sir Michael Lyons

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BBC Trust chairman Michael Lyons has pledged not to wade into editorial decisions about provocative output and has defended the corporation's right to take risks.

Speaking on Radio 4's Today programme, Lyons said the BBC had a duty to serve all audiences, but acknowledged that this sometimes raised difficult questions about appropriate content.

"If it weren't a matter of judgement we wouldn't need editors and controllers," he said.

"What we all know is when a programme goes too far, and clearly what happened in the Brand programme is absolutely too far.

"But actually defining where the boundaries about what's acceptable … it's different to different parts of the audience, it's different to different age groups, it changes over time, can even be different for me between how I feel on one occasion and how I feel on another.

"The BBC cannot retrench and fail to serve all audiences. Its public purposes of informing, educating, contributing to political discourse in this country require it to be able to engage with all of the British people."

Lyons was repeatedly pressed by interviewer John Humphrys about Jonathan Ross' provocative style, and agreed that incidents such as Ross' questioning Tory leader David Cameron about whether he had ever "wanked" over Margaret Thatcher as a youth, were unacceptable.

But he added: "This is not a question of me defining where the boundary lies. Let me be clear what the Trust has asked for: we're saying there's a need for further tightening of the editorial controls… What this incident shows is that there are still some parts of the BBC where the editorial responsibilities are not being taken seriously enough and they need to be reinforced.

"And the trust has paid particular attention to the need for even stricter controls where you're dealing with provocative material. The BBC should not back off of taking risks, being provocative, whether it's in terms of the journalism that you do or whether it's in terms of entertainment. But considerable responsibility rests on the shoulders of those who've got privileged editorial control."