For many years, by her own account, Lucie Kon's religion was the least interesting thing about her at work. She was a commissioning editor at the BBC, a quiet architect of documentaries, and one of the executive producers behind Mr Nobody Against Putin, the film that carried an Oscar into the corporation's trophy cabinet. Then came 7 October 2023, and, she says, the temperature in the building changed. Speaking to The Telegraph, Kon described colleagues who allegedly said that Zionists like her were evil, and another who suggested that anyone calling Hamas terrorists must say the same of Israel.

She had helped to lead a network for Jewish staff and had carried her worries as far as the then director general, Tim Davie. Yet the more she spoke, she told the BBC, the more she became "a problem", a woman with "Jew stamped on my forehead", someone the institution did not know what to do with. Her post was eventually closed in a restructure, and she received about £400,000, which she says covered redundancy back pay and a settlement for personal injury caused by the process. The BBC's position is carefully balanced.

It says it did not uphold any of the antisemitism allegations, but it concedes there were shortcomings in how Kon was treated, and that these affected her personally, without saying what they were. It also stresses that she was a valued colleague of long standing. What lingers is Kon's own verdict, given to LBC, that the BBC is not institutionally antisemitic. The distinction is a fine one, and perhaps the most important in the story: an organisation can reject a charge of prejudice while still failing a person who felt it.