Corporation says revision began before Paris attack, but David Dimbleby still quotes out-of-date guidelines on Question Time

The BBC is revising its own rules banning the representation of the prophet Muhammad “in any shape or form”, it has emerged after a Charlie Hebdo cover featured on BBC1’s flagship 10pm news on Thursday.

The news bulletin featured library footage of Charlie Hebdo editor Stéphane Charbonnier, who was shot and killed in Wednesday’s terrorist attack on the French satirical magazine’s Paris offices, holding up a special edition of the magazine four years ago featuring a cartoon of Muhammad on its front page threatening readers with “a hundred lashes if you don’t die laughing”.

It appeared to contradict the BBC’s own editorial guidelines which were coincidentally read out on BBC1’s Question Time, which followed the news.

The BBC said the guidelines were out of date and indicated that the process of revising them had been under way for some time and was unrelated to the events in Paris.



Question Time presenter David Dimbleby said: “I wouldn’t be doing my duty if I didn’t read this out from the BBC editorial guidelines.”

Dimbleby quoted extensively from a section of the guidelines on the use of still photographs and images which said: “Due care and consideration must be made regarding the use of religious symbols in images which may cause offence.

“The Prophet Mohammed must not be represented in any shape or form.”

The BBC1 programme also tweeted a link to the BBC guidelines but the page was not accessible on Friday afternoon.

BBC Question Time tweeted out of date editorial guidelines (link no longer works)

The BBC said in a statement on Friday: “This guidance is old, out of date and does not reflect the BBC’s long-standing position that programme makers have freedom to exercise their editorial judgement with the editorial policy team available to provide advice around sensitive issues on a case-by-case basis.

“The guidance is currently being revised.”

The guidelines which Dimbleby quotes from are believed to date from 2010.

The Charlie Hebdo cover featured in a report towards the end of Thursday’s bulletin by the BBC’s religious affairs correspondent, Caroline Wyatt.

Most UK media did not reprint any of the satirical magazine’s caricatures of Muhammad or the cartoons from Denmark’s Jyllands-Posten, with which Charlie Hebdo first provoked international outrage in 2006.

Independent editor Amol Rajan said “every instinct” told him to publish the cartoons but described it as “too much of a risk”.

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