At the 2026 British Academy of Film and Television (Bafta) awards, big wins for independent British film I Swear and American horror film Sinners were overshadowed by a regrettable moment. Activist John Davidson uttered the N-word — arguably the most offensive slur in the English language due to the centuries of violence and oppression it carries — while Sinners’ stars Michael B Jordan and Delroy Lindo were presenting an award.
Davidson, on whom the film I Swear is based, has Tourette syndrome, including coprolalia, which causes the involuntary use of obscene and socially inappropriate words and phrases.
Jordon and Lindo looked shaken and have since expressed their discomfort and disappointment with the Baftas’ handling of the situation. In a letter of apology to Bafta members, the academy said it was launching a “comprehensive review” of the matter.
Since the incident, Davidson has received extensive online abuse, including accusations that he is a racist — an accusation that fails to consider that the slur was due to an involuntary audible compulsion. Davidson has stressed there was no intention behind the word, stating he was “deeply mortified if anyone considers my involuntary tics to be intentional or to carry any meaning”.
Two things can be true at the same time. While this incident was involuntary, that does not lessen the hurt or offence Jordan, Lindo and members of the viewing public felt. No-one could have prevented Davidson’s involuntary compulsion in the moment.
However, it could have been edited out of the delayed broadcast. A second slur was removed, but this one was missed. Doing so would have spared viewers from hearing the slur and helped protect Davidson and others with Tourette syndrome from the abuse that followed. It also could have reduced the spread of misinformation about the condition, which directly undermines the mission of I Swear to teach empathy and kindness towards people with Tourette syndrome.
By broadcasting the Baftas on a two-hour delay in a condensed format, the BBC assumes greater editorial responsibility than with live transmission. It must therefore meet higher standards and be able to justify its editing choices. The BBC failed to do that in this instance, causing undue harm to black and disabled people.
There are two main reasons for the Baftas to be broadcast with a delay. The first is engagement. The award ceremony lasts three hours, so to help make it less tedious the broadcast is edited down to two hours.
The second is political. The BBC’s editorial guidelines require it to prevent harm and offence to viewers. Award shows are considered high-risk because they are live and broadcasters cannot control what winners say.
This is often called “the tyranny of live”. As media and communications scholar Paddy Scannell wrote, in live broadcasting “if something goes wrong, the best you can do is damage limitation, for once the words are out of your mouth, they are in the public domain and they cannot be unsaid”.
Yet, by broadcasting at a delay to mitigate “the tyranny of live”, broadcasters open up a new can of editorial worms — “the tyranny of the edit”.
In live broadcasting, when things go wrong, they can often be blamed on live conditions. While this does not necessarily reduce any harm caused, it can reduce culpability. Once a programme has been edited, this no longer applies, raising the editorial standards and making broadcasters accountable for every word spoken and removed.
In other words, broadcasters must be able to justify every editorial choice to their audience, especially when those choices cause harm or censor a political perspective.
Reaction and lessons
The BBC has apologised for broadcasting the slur and re-edited the programme for BBC iPlayer. Producers overseeing the coverage told The Guardian they did not hear the N-word from the broadcast truck due to a technical issue. That is hardly a reassuring defence of their actions.
Davidson later said he was assured by Bafta that any swearing would be edited out of the broadcast, and he felt “a wave of shame” over the incident. He also questioned the decision to seat him so close to a microphone.
The BBC has also offered no explanation for the post-production removal of sections of My Father’s Shadow director Akinola Davies Jnr’s acceptance speech, including a statement of solidarity with “the economic migrant, the conflict migrant, those under occupation, dictatorship, persecution and those experiencing genocide” and the remark “free Palestine”.
Labour MP Dawn Butler has written to the BBC seeking a full explanation for these decisions.
Beyond the immediate fallout, this episode carries wider lessons for the BBC about learning from past errors. Last summer, the BBC was found to have broken harm and offence standards after airing “death, death to the IDF” chants in Bob Vylan’s Glastonbury set. After the incident, it promised to review its protocols for the livestreaming of “high-risk” events. Yet a similar misjudgment happened again.
To maintain public trust and support, the BBC must be more responsive in explaining its editorial choices, and more forthcoming when it gets things wrong.
- Modell is a research associate at Cardiff University.
This article first appeared in The Conversation.
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