Consultation on the BBC’s draft Editorial Guidelines
The BBC periodically reviews the Editorial Guidelines to ensure they keep pace with our legal requirements and changing audience expectations.
Date:04.10.2018 Last updated: 04.10.2018 at 12.37
The BBC has opened a consultation on a revised draft of the Editorial Guidelines which set the content standards for the BBC’s programme makers and other content producers for BBC services.
The Guidelines cover impartiality, accuracy, fairness, privacy and harm and offence, and further sections deal with a range of topics such as religious programming, war, terror, conflicts of interest, competitions, votes, relationships with other organisations and commercial references.
The Guidelines evolve over time to take account of changes in BBC regulation as set out in the BBC’s Royal Charter and Agreement; changes in legislation, developments in editorial thinking and lessons learnt from editorial rulings as well as reflecting changes in public attitudes and technology. The BBC therefore periodically reviews the Guidelines to ensure they keep pace with both our legal requirements and with changing audience expectations.
Under the current Charter, the BBC Board is responsible for the Editorial Guidelines. The Agreement states that the BBC must: “set, publish, review periodically, and observe guidelines designed to secure appropriate standards in the context of the UK Public Services”. This is the first revision of the Editorial Guidelines under this new governance system.
The BBC Board has approved for consultation the version published here and will take into account views expressed in the consultation before finalising and publishing the Guidelines. Depending on the outcome of the consultation this is likely to be early in 2019.
The existing (2010) Guidelines will remain in force until the consultation has concluded and the revised Guidelines have been finalised and published.
The consultation document below explains why we are consulting, what we are consulting on and how to respond. It should be read alongside the draft Editorial Guidelines also published below.
This consultation is open from4 Octoberto12 November 2018.
How to respond
Download the consultation document and guidance on how to respond.