Under fire and lacking leadership, BBC staff's default is: 'Avoid Gaza'

The scale of complaints has created a newsroom that is overthinking its coverage

- Stephen Armstrong & Rachel Sylvester Political Editor

For the past week, rumours have been circulating at the BBC that Lisa Nandy, secretary of state for culture, asked BBC chair Samir Shah to sack the director-general, Tim Davie, following his failure to prevent the broadcast of anti-Israeli chanting by the artist Bob Vylan at Glastonbury.

The impression was fuelled by an interview with the Times last weekend in which Nandy said she was "very clear that people must be held accountable for the decisions that were taken" in relation to Glastonbury. Nandy said she had asked the board why nobody had been fired if the broadcast was a sackable offence. She added: "I have not had an adequate explanation from the chair or director-general yet."

The Observer has been told it is "categorically untrue" that Nandy asked for Davie to be sacked, but it is highly unusual for a culture secretary to publicly criticise the BBC director-general so unambiguously. Nandy did ask for a full explanation of what action was being taken over Glastonbury - during which the BBC streamed footage of Vylan leading a chant of "death to the IDF" - and the airing of the documentary Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone, which was narrated by the son of a Hamas official. Nandy said there needed to be accountability, according to one source, and asked Shah: "Are you confident that the leadership of the BBC can grip this and deal with this?"