No prizes for guessing what the corporate governance story of the week is.

Short summary, in case you have been residing under a rock: the BBC’s Director General and CEO of News both resigned in the wake of a leaked report into editorial bias, centred on a Panorama programme that spliced content from U.S. President Donald Trump on the day of the 2021 Capitol Hill riot to make his words appear more incendiary.

The BBC has apologised for what it called an “error of judgement”, while Trump has threatened to sue the corporation for $1bn.

It is yet another BBC crisis, and goes deeper than the Trump editing in question. 

The internal report also concluded that BBC Arabic had shown anti-Israel bias in its reporting of the war in Gaza and that an effort to cover a group campaigning for single-sex spaces had been suppressed by a small group of staff who saw it as hostile to the transgender community, according to Reuters.

There have been, understandably, accusations that other media have ‘ganged up’ on the BBC to force the situation, with no shortage of irony in the way that some have criticised the BBC’s apparent failure to uphold its editorial independence, despite their greater liberty to bend words and content, and the outgoing News CEO proclaiming that the corporation’s output remained unbiased.

GB News ran multiple stories outlining criticism that the BBC was “corrupt” and quoted Trump saying that Britons should “watch GB News instead". The Telegraph’s lengthy editorial piece detailed how it thought the BBC had “crumbled under Davie”. The Daily Mail took great glee in outlining how the two executives had “quit in disgrace”.

The Guardian played it straighter, but noted that “some BBC figures point to an effort to shift the corporation politically, dating back to Boris Johnson’s time in government”, hinting that the political right has continually been seeking to undermine the BBC.

But the root of the story is ultimately how the BBC is governed. In its lead editorial on the story, the Financial Times opined that “the broadcaster has made errors, but its board has failed to defend it,” questioning whether the current board and chair had the stomach to appoint a sufficiently strong replacement director general to push through required reforms across the BBC and lead it through the choppy aftermath of its latest crisis.

There is, of course, the question about why editors choose to twist the Capitol Hill day footage, and we’ll likely never know what was in their heads. 

But it has clearly given critics ample ammunition to go on the offensive, and made many observers ponder what the UK media landscape would be like without a publicly-funded, neutrality-committed BBC in the future.

Culture secretary Lisa Nandy, as the BBC itself reported, remarked that the BBC must uphold the high editorial standards but caution against a “sustained attack’ on it by politicians.

The whole affair casts a strong spotlight on how the BBC’s board functions, and how the people who sit on it oversee governance of the institution. That scrutiny isn’t just about why people took the editorial decisions they did or why high-profile presenters were allowed to breach policy or commit offences. It is also about the make-up of the board and how it functions, with this Sky News article outlining who’s who and questioning the part played by non-executive director Sir Robbie Gibb.

The saga certainly highlights the importance of the board in corporate governance. For companies with ESG programmes that hinge on sound governance and with sustainability targets that will wobble unless it prevails, it also raises the spectre of corporate governance being more in the public spotlight in future, with lines drawn to company behaviour and broader decision-making.

What happens next? The Culture, Media and Sport Committee will hold an evidence session in the coming few weeks with members of the BBC’s editorial guidelines and standards committee – BBC chair Samir Shah and board members Gibb and Caroline Thomson.

The BBC is an unique organisation with unique reputation, governance and scrutiny considerations. It has undoubtedly handled some major things very badly, with tragic consequences, but it is also singled out for criticism, potentially fairly and unfairly, in ways that no other media platform ever will be.

For all communications teams looking on, there are likely two trains of thought from all of this. Firstly, do we have a strong corporate governance story given it may be more in the frame in future, and secondly what further disruption will a changed BBC, in whatever form that takes, mean for the UK media environment?