The BBC’s director general, Tony Hall, has apologised after the N-word was used in a TV news broadcast, following mass complaints and the resignation of one of the corporation’s radio DJs. “Every organisation should be able to acknowledge when it has made a mistake. We made one here,” Hall said in an email to all BBC staff. The BBC had previously refused to apologise about the use of the word last month in a report that originally aired on the regional service Points West, before being repeated on the main BBC News channel. The report, by the BBC social affairs correspondent Fiona Lamdin, repeated the language allegedly shouted during an attack on a young black man in Bristol. The BBC defended its decision, saying the inclusion of the racial slur was made with the approval of the victim and his family, who wanted to show the severity of the attack. It said the decision to broadcast the word followed discussions involving “senior editorial figures” and was preceded by a warning to viewers. The use of the word prompted more than 18,000 complaints to the BBC. On Saturday, the Radio 1Xtra presenter Sideman quit his job, saying he could not work with the BBC allowing “the N-word being said on national television by a white person”. Sideman, the professional name of the comedian and presenter David Whitely, said in an Instagram post that the BBC’s subsequent defence of the broadcast felt “like a slap in the face of our community”. Speaking on LBC radio on Sunday, David Lammy MP said the N-word was “probably the most offensive word in English” adding that he was “pleased that the director general has issued an apology, but I am staggered that it has taken days”. In his email, Hall said he had convened a meeting of colleagues to discuss “the issues raised by the reporting and the strength of feeling surrounding it”. He wrote: “It should be clear that the BBC’s intention was to highlight an alleged racist attack. This is important journalism which the BBC should be reporting on and we will continue to do so. “Yet despite these good intentions, I recognise that we have ended up creating distress amongst many people. The BBC now accepts that we should have taken a different approach at the time of broadcast and we are very sorry for that. We will now be strengthening our guidance on offensive language across our output. “Every organisation should be able to acknowledge when it has made a mistake. We made one here. It is important for us to listen – and also to learn. And that is what we will continue to do.” Responding to the U-turn, the comic London Hughes tweeted about the BBC’s slowness to act. Meanwhile, the lawyer and women’s rights activist Dr Shola Mos-Shogbamimu tweeted that it “took BBC long enough to feel ‘very sorry’”. The Danish comedian Sofie Hagen also commented on the decision, noting that she was told by the BBC she could not say “Oh my God” or “queer”. It is not the first time the BBC has had to backtrack on a controversial decision. In October, Hall rowed back on the decision to sanction the BBC Breakfast presenter Naga Munchetty for breaching impartiality guidelines after she responded to Donald Trump’s comments that four American congresswomen of colour should “go home”. Munchetty said: “Every time I have been told, as a woman of colour, to go back to where I came from, that was embedded in racism.” In a letter to BBC staff, Hall did not offer an apology to Munchetty, but said he had looked at the arguments, materials and the complaint involved in the case: “It was only ever in a limited way that there was found to be a breach of our guidelines. These are often finely balanced and difficult judgments,” he said. “But, in this instance, I don’t think Naga’s words were sufficient to merit a partial uphold of the complaint around the comments she made. There was never any sanction against Naga and I hope this step makes that absolutely clear. She is an exceptional journalist and presenter and I am proud that she works for the BBC. “I have asked the editorial and leadership teams to discuss how we manage live exchanges on air around these topics in the future. Our impartiality is fundamental to our journalism and is what our audiences expect of us.”