A human resources executive at the BBC has been revealed to have shared social media posts wishing for the death of President Donald Trump, as Britain’s left-leaning publicly funded broadcaster seeks to clamp down on partisan remarks online.
Melanie Briggs, the “mediation lead” for the BBC and HR executive, had allegedly shown her deep leftist bias on social media.
On Sunday, The Sun newspaper reported that on her account — which has since been deleted — Briggs shared a message in 2017 that said of President Donald Trump: “Please just have a massive coronary and die before you kill everyone else, you deranged, stupid man.”
The HR executive also described the leader of the Free World as a “massive c*nt”.
Briggs was found to have retweeted messages from socialist accounts, expressed support for far-left former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, and called right-leaning British actor Laurence Fox a “c*nt”.
A source within the BBC told the British newspaper: “This is very inappropriate. She’s in a very senior HR role and is constantly swearing using the worst language and posting her political views openly. The timing could not be worse. It’s just after the new top dog said he didn’t want employees openly being political. This is far worse than that.”
“The tweets are outrageous. Wishing somebody dead is appalling. Surely it goes against the BBC values and policies that HR must have an involvement in,” the source added.
“She must get involved in difficult situations at the BBC, and these disturbing tweets have probably caused a difficult situation for herself,” the source concluded.
Melanie Briggs also took aim at the leader of Great Britain, sharing a message calling for leftist activists to take to the streets if Prime Minister Boris Johnson suspended parliament to pass through a no-deal Brexit.
She later questioned why the prime minister was in intensive care during his bout with the Chinese coronavirus, sharing a message that read: “He is not on a ventilator. He is not on oxygen. He is in good spirits. So… why is he in intensive care?”
The controversy comes as the newly installed director-general of the BBC, Tim Davie, has expressed support for limiting partisan posts from BBC employees online.
“If you want to be an opinionated columnist or a partisan campaigner on social media then that is a valid choice, but you should not be working at the BBC,” Davie said, according to The Guardian.
It is doubtful that many high profile figures within the BBC will be affected by the policy, particularly if they are out of the realm of news or current affairs. This would, for instance, allow left-wing sports broadcaster Gary Lineker to continue to spout his positions on social media.
Last week, the BBC presenter posted a video on social media promoting the importance of so-called refugees to the UK, arguing that the British staple dish ‘fish and chips’ was a byproduct of migration.
The liberal-progressive broadcaster has faced growing pressure over its bias, with both the political left and the right in Britain taking aim at the BBC for perceived bias.
A 2019 poll conducted by Norstat showed that almost two-thirds of the British public thought that the BBC was biased. A separate poll from YouGov found that just 44 per cent Britons trust BBC journalists to be truthful in their reporting, as opposed to 48 per cent did not believe the media outlet to be honest.
The bias at the BBC was demonstrated in a 2018 study from the think tank Civitas and a 2017 report of News-Watch that found BBC Radio 4’s flagship news and currents affairs show, the Today programme, systematically held down pro-Brexit and Eurosceptic opinions.
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