Newsnight: Emily Maitlis 'asked for the night off' after Dominic Cummings reprimand

Emily Maitlis failed to appear on Newsnight because she "asked for the night off" after the BBC said her monologue about Dominic Cummings breached impartiality guidelines.

Ms Maitlis caused a politic storm when she opened Tuesday night's BBC Two programme with the words: "Dominic Cummings broke the rules. The country can see that and it’s shocked the Government cannot.”

She criticised Boris Johnson’s “blind loyalty” to his special adviser and said the public mood is one of “fury, contempt and anguish”.

Following a day of furious criticism, the BBC released a statement on Wednesday saying that the BBC Two programme had fallen short of required standards.

Although the BBC did not go as far as an apology, Maitlis was said to be furious that she and her colleagues had been publicly reprimanded and she did not appear as planned on Wednesday's programme. The presenter Katie Razzall took her place.

In the early hours of Thursday morning , Ms Maitlis took to Twitter to explain why she hadn't appeared on Wednesday night's episode.

"So grateful to my friend and excellent colleague  @katierazz  for stepping in this evening . She did so because I asked for the night off -knowing tonight’s prog would be in the most excellent hands," she tweeted.

She later thanked her followers for their support, adding: "Been overwhelmed by all the kindness, messages - and support on here - and I’ve probably missed much of it. A big thank you from us all at #newsnight."

In her monologue on Tuesday, the presenter said of Mr Cummings: “He was the man, remember, who always ‘got’ the public mood, who tagged the lazy label of ‘elite’ on those who disagreed… He made those who struggled to keep to the rules feel like fools and has allowed many more to assume they can now flout them.”

The clip was later deleted from the BBC Politics Twitter feed and Maitlis is understood to have been reprimanded, along with colleagues. But there will be no broadcast apology.

The BBC said in a statement: "The BBC must uphold the highest standards of due impartiality in its news output. We've reviewed the entirety of last night's Newsnight, inluding the opening section, and while we believe the programme contained fair, reasonable and rigorous journalism, we feel that we should have done more to make clear the introduction was a summary of the questions we would examine, with all the accompanying evidence, in the rest of the programme.

"As it was, we believe the introduction we broadcast did not meet our standards of due impartiality. Our staff have been reminded of the guidelines."

On Thursday morning, Conservative MP Daniel Kawczynski said he had declined an interview on Newsnight as he found Ms Maitlis "aggressive,unnecessarily rude, biased & confrontational to point of intimidation".

He added: "This behaviour would not be tolerated in any normal workplace so why do we accept from #BBC."

The Government and Mr Cummings maintain that his trip to Durham while his wife had Covid-19 symptoms was within the rules.

During the programme, Ms Maitlis interviewed two politicians who called for Mr Cummings to quit - Tory MP Craig Whittaker and the SNP’s Ian Blackford - and one who supported him, Andrew Bridgen.

Mr Bridgen, Conservative MP for North West Leicestershire, told the Telegraph: “I heard Emily Maitlis’s monologue twice, because I heard her say it in a rehearsal.

“She said it as a statement of fact. There was no pretence of impartiality in any of that report. It was judge, jury and executioner.

“On the programme, it was four against one - Maitlis, Craig Whittaker and Ian Blackford against me - and I was the only one she interrupted.

“All of the news now has become basically an op-ed. You have Piers Morgan on GMB… they’re all fighting for ratings against various media platforms and it’s a race to the bottom.

“The biggest thing I have always objected to with the BBC is that they don’t just report the news, they decide what the news is. Everything is slanted.”

The BBC Charter requires the corporation “to do all we can to ensure controversial subjects are treated with due impartiality in our news and other output”. The BBC’s guidelines state: “The BBC Agreement forbids our output from expressing the opinion of the BBC on current affairs or matters of public policy.”

Ms Maitlis’s speech, which she wrote herself, was praised by the Labour MP David Lammy as an example of “public service broadcasting”, and by Ed Davey, the acting Lib Dem leader, as “brilliant journalism”. Ms Maitlis retweeted praise from a viewer who called the monologue “savage brilliance”.

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