Lewis Goodall, the former policy editor of Newsnight and now a presenter on the hit podcast The News Agents, has alleged that his BBC bosses failed to “push back enough” when his reporting was criticised by a former Conservative communications chief, Robbie Gibb.
“It was McCarthyite,” he says, suggesting in a candid new interview in the Observer Magazine that he was briefly the target of a Tory witch-hunt – an uncomfortable period which intensified when Gibb joined the board of the BBC. “People high up at the BBC didn’t seem to be pushing back enough.”
He added: “I had a few experiences where editors told me to ‘be careful: Robbie is watching you.’ It was improper for someone on the board, not supposed to be involved in editorial, to be involved in editorial, to be interfering.”
Goodall, 35, who presents The News Agents alongside Emily Maitlis and Jon Sopel, also suggests the incident led in part to his decision to leave the corporation. “I was dispirited. The BBC didn’t fight for me to stay when I floated leaving. I got the message.”
The row between the council-estate-raised Oxford graduate and Gibb – a former BBC news executive who was Theresa May’s communications expert in No 10 – first erupted publicly on Twitter in 2020 when Gibb suggested that Goodall was biased.
Goodall replied sarcastically: “Thanks for this Robbie. Maybe one day, if I’m as impartial as you, I can get a knighthood, too.” Gibb’s follow-up tweet made his position clear: “Is there anyone more damaging to the BBC’s reputation for impartiality than @lewis_goodall?”
Gibb was appointed to the BBC board in May 2021, despite widespread criticism about his evident political associations. Goodall shared the concern about Gibb’s oversight role but says he would have had the same doubts about an overt Labour-party appointment to the board.
While Goodall does admit to making mistakes when he started at the BBC and was “young and hungry”, he argues his views did not affect his work. “There’s a difference between being impartial and acting impartially,” he says. “Nobody is entirely impartial. Nick Robinson was a Conservative activist once.” Both Robinson and acknowledged rightwinger Andrew Neil are journalists he “respects hugely”, he adds.
Gibb and the BBC were approached for comment.