Emily Maitlis knew exactly what she was doing last week when she retweeted a provocative post by Piers Morgan. It read: “If failing to quarantine properly is punishable by 10yrs in prison,

what is the punishment for failing to properly protect the country from a pandemic?”  The BBC _Newsnight_ presenter has nearly half a million followers on Twitter. So this gesture of

defiance to the Government was no less public than her notorious diatribe on air last May when she accused Dominic Cummings of “breaking the rules”. That incident led to her censure by the

BBC for failing to meet “our standards of due impartiality”, but she suffered no further consequences.  Now Ms Maitlis appears to be testing the mettle of her new boss. The Director-General,

narrow a range of views a platform. The programme claims to push boundaries but it has sometimes seemed reluctant to challenge metropolitan liberal mindsets.  Nobody doubts that Ms Maitlis

is a formidable, independent-minded presenter whose job it is to ask tough questions and give ministers a rough ride. If Piers Morgan, who presents ITV’s _Good Morning _Britain, can

criticise the Government on social media, why shouldn’t his counterpart on _Newsnight _do the same? Is it fair that Ms Maitlis should be held to a higher standard? Would there be such a fuss

if she weren’t an attractive woman? The answer, as Stephen Rand argued here yesterday, is that the BBC is unlike any other broadcaster in the world. It is uniquely trusted by a global

audience to deliver reliable news and analysis. In what Rand calls the “information war” with China and Russia, the BBC is “the broadcasting equivalent of a nuclear arsenal”. When we knock

the BBC, we should be careful what we wish for. There is a case for phasing out the licence fee or even for full privatisation — but only as a last resort. Most people still think the BBC

offers good value for money. They just want it to live up to its values: high-quality, hard-hitting programmes with no ideological agenda. By the same token, however, we expect the

highly-paid executives who run the Corporation to prevent its journalists from lapsing into lazy, tendentious attitudes. When he took over last September, Tim Davie put down a marker on

impartiality. He told a Commons select committee that in cases of BBC staff breaching guidelines on social media, “We will be able to take disciplinary action, we will be able to take people

off Twitter. I know people want to see hard action on this.” The D-G promised a “range of enforcements”, ranging from “a talking to” in the case of “foot faults” to “more serious

matters…all the way to termination”. Staff who broke the rules could be asked to suspend their Twitter accounts if they wished to continue working for the BBC.  Interestingly, Davie made two

distinctions. First: “The bar will be higher for news and current affairs” than for those working in other areas of the broadcasting, such as sport or entertainment. (He evidently had in

mind Gary Lineker, the BBC’s highest-paid presenter, who had been criticised for airing his political views on Twitter.) Secondly: occasional contributors would not be held to the same

standards on social media as key presenters: “If someone is the face of the BBC, I think entering into party politics seems to me not the right place to be.”  By both these criteria, Ms

Maitlis is, or ought to be, in serious trouble with the D-G. Hers is one of the most important roles in news and current affairs. And if she is not “the face of the BBC”, who is?   There is

also a financial aspect to this phenomenon. Social media has become something of a free-for-all, where BBC personalities can exploit the celebrity conferred by their status on television —

at the expense of the public. Such a bonanza for broadcasters is, perhaps, inevitable. But the licence fee (which, unlike incomes, rises inexorably) is only acceptable to viewers — who pay

what amounts to a poll tax for the privilege of owning a television set — if the broadcasters are strictly held to account. We have yet to see a widespread licence feepayers’ revolt, but the

Government has indicated that it is minded to decriminalise non-payment to relieve the burden on the courts. That would lead to a drastic cut in the BBC’s revenues.  Hence the

Director-General cannot simply turn a blind eye to his _Newsnight _star presenter’s provocation. Retweeting Piers Morgan is in itself a venial sin; he could simply let it go. But Tim Davie’s

credibility is now on the line. This is not her first offence. If he does not, as a bare minimum, carpet Emily Maitlis and invite her to suspend her Twitter account, then his threats will

have been shown to be empty ones. She will not be the only BBC journalist to take their cue from her apparent impunity. If she refuses to take a break from Twitter, he would have no choice

but to go “all the way” to sacking her. Her dismissal would cause an almighty row, because it would be the first of its kind. The likelihood is, however, that it would also be the last.  A

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