Emily Maitlis said the BBC “sought to pacify” Downing Street by issuing a swift apology for her Newsnight monologue about Dominic Cummings.
The journalist added her introduction received “way more attention than in truth it ever deserved”.Maitlis, 51, who left the BBC this year for rival media group Global, used the annual MacTaggart Lecture at the Edinburgh TV Festival to highlight what she described as the “normalising” of populist ideas by the media.
Referencing both former US president Donald Trump and the Brexit debate, Maitlis described her “thesis” as being that both “political actors” and politics itself have changed but journalists are yet to catch up.