BBC News presenter Maryam Moshiri has apologised after she was accidentally captured making a middle finger gesture at the start of a live broadcast on Wednesday. The incident occurred at the beginning of the noon BBC News bulletin, just after the programme's countdown ended, when Moshiri raised her middle finger and eyebrows before quickly lowering her hand and adopting a serious expression to read headlines about Boris Johnson's appearance at the Covid inquiry.
In a statement on X on Thursday morning, Moshiri explained that the gesture was part of a private joke with her team. She wrote: 'When we got to 1 I turned [my] finger around as a joke and did not realise that this would be caught on camera. It was a private joke with the team and I'm so sorry it went out on air! It was not my intention for this to happen and I'm sorry if I offended or upset anyone.' She added that she was not 'flipping the bird' at viewers but rather engaging in a 'silly joke' meant for a small number of colleagues.
The gaffe drew mixed reactions online, with some viewers criticising it as unprofessional and calling for the defunding of the BBC, while others found it amusing. One supporter wrote: 'As a BBC licence payer I demand more of this type of behaviour.' The incident echoes a similar moment in 2010 when BBC weatherman Tomasz Schafernaker jokingly made the same gesture at presenter Simon McCoy, which later became a popular clip.
Robert Coxwell, the gallery producer for the show, commented on X that the clip had been taken from an internal archive system called Autorot, and that it was 'regrettable' someone had amplified it. He noted that only two people on X had initially noticed the gesture, but it gained traction after being clipped and shared from the BBC's internal system.
