After 10 months without a permanent boss, I have picked up a sense of drift. Everybody understands – and the new DG repeats this, just as his predecessor Tim David did – that the BBC must go to where audiences are and where they will be in the future.
Staff at BBC News have heard this before. They want to know what it actually means in practice and how news will be reorganised.
The biggest challenge is the change in viewing habits. News has a loyal base of viewers still watching on linear channels (and who many argue should not be taken for granted in the rush to attract younger audiences online) but the direction of travel is changing fast.
There will be resistance – from viewers, from politicians, from campaign groups – as the BBC decides to move away from old formats and old technology. But it must go where audiences are and the new head of news will need a strategy to move much more deeply into a digital world.
The BBC has been doing this in a fairly piecemeal way up to now.
But Jupp will need to turbocharge it – with fewer resources and a demoralised workforce, some of whom she will need to shepherd out the door.
Brittin has talked about the bigger prize of getting the news division’s trusted journalism to much larger numbers of people around the world. She has to deliver that.
She will also need to give BBC News greater editorial confidence after years of political attack and the errors of recent years.
Staff working in news would argue it was the current affairs side of the operation that previously let the organisation down. A documentary about the children of Gaza narrated by the son of a Hamas official. A documentary about Israel’s assault on Gazan medical staff commissioned and then dropped by the BBC and later shown on Channel 4.
Then, of course, there are the revelations that a Panorama broadcast ahead of Donald Trump’s reelection as President had spliced together two clips of the President’s speech on the day of the riots on Capitol Hill – changing the editorial meaning. BBC chair Samir Shah apologised to Trump who is suing the BBC for $10bn. The court proceedings are still playing out.
Perhaps promoting Jupp – who took over the BBC News’ current affairs department after the scandals – to the top of News is a signal she will grip what some have viewed as a weak spot with rigour.
Trust is one of the BBC’s core values. It’s listed on the back of our work passes as “the foundation of the BBC”. The new boss will need to make sure that the BBC remains the place of record. An organisation that is trusted.
It’s still the most trusted source of news, but there are growing numbers of people on all sides of the political spectrum who don’t feel the BBC speaks for them.
Many will argue that is because people live in echo chambers online, and don’t want to hear other voices.
But any loss of trust is corrosive.
