the times | Monday February 21 2022 19
News
The BBC is looking to make another
wave of senior journalists redundant
even as fears grow that a brain drain is
leading to more on-air blunders.
The corporation has reopened its
voluntary redundancy scheme and is
looking for at least a dozen more em-
ployees to step forward, according to an
email seen by The Times.
It is part of a big newsroom restruc-
ture in its third year. Insiders are wor-
ried that more cuts are coming after the
BBC’s licence fee was frozen until 2024,
leaving a £1.4 billion hole in its finances.
Hundreds of journalists have already
left, with previously unreported depar-
tures including Alan Johnston, a
veteran correspondent who became
national news in 2007 when he was
held hostage for 114 days in Gaza.
The redundancy push is designed to
free up space so other BBC journalists
can fill gaps after being unable to find a
place within the broadcaster’s new
newsroom structure. The “preference
survey” exercise has been drawn-out
and painful for staff, who have essen-
tially been told to reapply for their jobs
by listing their preferred roles.
An analysis by The Times has shown
that journalists with more than 1,
years of experience have left the BBC
over the past two years, including
senior editors and reporters. Notable
departures include David Shukman,
the long-serving science editor, Sangita
Myska, a correspondent who worked at
the BBC for 20 years, and Rory Cellan-
Jones, the technology correspondent.
Andrew Neil is to present a Sunday
evening TV politics show starting in the
spring, Channel 4 has announced.
The news comes five months after
Neil, 72, quit as chairman of GB News,
the station that he launched in June. He
helped to found GB News after a 16-
year stint as host of BBC1’s This Week,
which the corporation pulled in 2019.
The Channel 4 programme, with the
working title Sunday Politics with
Andrew Neil, will run for ten weeks ini-
tially. A time slot is still to be announced
for the live, half-hour show.
Neil said he was “honoured and
delighted. Sunday night is a pivotal
point in the political week — we can
sweep up what’s happened in the previ-
ous week, mop up what’s been in the
Sunday papers and talk shows and
throw forward to the upcoming week.”
The journalist’s career began at the
GB News presenters rain blows on Robinson over Storm Eunice jibe
said: “They dream of that at GB News,
I’ll tell you that.” Robinson, 58, said on
Radio 4’s Toda y on Saturday: “It was an
extraordinary number of people.”
More than five million people tuned
into Big Jet TV’s footage on Friday.
GB News had 2.2 million viewers in
the four weeks to January 2 compared
with the BBC’s 15.9 million and 10.9 mil-
lion for Sky News, according to Press
Gazette, which covers the news industry.
Robinson’s remark triggered a socialmedia backlash. Stewart, 69, a presenter
on GB News, called it “rather childish”.
Colin Brazier, 53, a former Sky News
reader who is now a presenter at GB
News, tweeted: “Every one of our view-
ers and, increasingly, listeners is there
because we’ve earned their interest,
loyalty and custom. Our wages are paid,
not by a broadcasting poll tax, but
through the exercise of choice. Every
sneer will cost you dear.”
Mark Dolan, another presenter onthe channel, called it a “snooty re-
mark”, and added: “These pampered
BBC stars and their management
haven’t got a clue about the real world
and the very country in which they
live.”
Dolan, 47, added: “It’s telling that
Robinson, this BBC lifer, on a cool
£270,000 a year, all paid for by you and
me, should seek to have a bit of a dig at
a smaller outfit, not even a year old,
which seeks to provide you with a voiceand provide a hopefully refreshing,
balanced take on the day’s news.”
The launch of GB News last June was
marred by technical difficulties.
In December Simon McCoy became
the latest senior figure to leave the
channel. The newsreader, 60, left for
“personal reasons”, with his morning
slot on the right-wing news channel
taken over by Eamonn Holmes and
Isabel Webster, a former Sky News
newsreader.Nick Robinson has faced the wrath of
GB News presenters including Alastair
Stewart after the BBC presenter joked
on air about their channel’s viewing
figures.
During an interview with Jerry Dyer,
creator of the online channel Big Jet TV
that amassed 238,000 viewers while
filming aircraft landing at Heathrow
airport during Storm Eunice, Robinson
Nadeem Badshah
BBC brain drain
leads to fears of
more blunders
Andrew Marr, Andrew Neil and
Simon McCoy were among the depart-
ing presenters.
Employees said that cracks had ap-
peared in output after wise heads had
left. Recent blunders include booking
Alan Dershowitz, Jeffrey Epstein’s
former lawyer, to appear on BBC News
minutes after Ghislaine Maxwell had
been convicted of sex trafficking. The
BBC said that Christmas staff shortages
were partly to blame for the error.
Regional newsrooms have also been
affected. Last week the BBC pulled a
second episode of We Are England, its
main regional current affairs show,
over insufficient research during the
making of a documentary about Caro-
line Flack’s former school.
Jonathan Munro, the BBC’s interim
director of news and current affairs,
was challenged over cuts leading to
errors during an all-staff meeting last
month. “We make mistakes sometimes,
you know, we’re a 24/7 live news opera-
tion on multiple platforms. We rely on
human judgments being made all the
time and dynamic and pressurised situ-
ations,” he said.
“I think we can... be really confident
about the vast, vast, vast majority of our
output, which is accurate, trusted, im-
partial, and all of the scores that meas-
ure those things demonstrate that.”
The BBC is moving hundreds of jour-
nalists out of London. The plans have
been met with resistance, however. The
majority of the World Service’s busi-
ness news desk and Radio 1’s Newsbeat
team have refused to move to Salford
and Birmingham respectively.Jake Kanter Media Correspondent
Neil to host Channel 4 show
Jonathan Ames Paisley Daily Express before he moved
to The Economist and The Sunday
Times, which he edited for 11 years until
1994.
Neil told a BBC Question Time
audience after he left GB News that
“more and more difference emerged
between myself and the other senior
managers and the board”.
He is the chairman and editor-in-
chief of Press Holdings Media Group,
publishers of The Spectator.
Louisa Compton, Channel 4’s head of
news, said that his show would “deliver
big-name politicians answering the
questions the public want to hear”.
Ian Rumsey, managing director of
television at ITN productions, which is
co-producing the show, said: “If ever
there was a time when Britain needed
forensic questioning, brilliant political
insight and to hold those in power to
account, it’s now. And there’s no finer
broadcaster to do that.”
Ancient tale inspires a
show of fragile beauty
Y
outh in
suspense, life
on hold... but
the latest
display by the
designer Simone Rocha
was not inspired by Covid
(Harriet Walker writes).
Rather it was a
retelling of an Irish tale,
Children of Lir, in which
an evil stepmother turns
a king’s four children into
swans. Rocha’s autumn
2022 show was held in the
Great Hall at Lincoln’s
Inn, central London, on
the eve of an
announcement about the
final Covid restrictions
being lifted in England.
Rocha has staged
smaller shows during the
pandemic but this was a
return to a more familiar
front row, packed with
the likes of FKA Twigs,
the singer, and Faye Wei
Wei, the visual artist.
On the catwalk, the
ancient tale took life with
gathered ivory silk and
taffeta dresses studded
with pearls and feathers.
Full tulle skirts were
hand-stitched with a
squiggling red
“bloodline” motif, and
gauzy sheer flapper shifts
were strewn with jewels
and
embroidered
swans.
“I wanted
to look at
ideas ofsecurity and family with
these garments,” Rocha
said. “They’re comforting
and warm but fragile as
well. I like making
clothes that make people
feel special.”
One backless gown
had a jewelled heart-
shaped, cut-out
suggesting the shape
of wings.
Rocha has
measured her
customers’ desire to
make an entrance
against their need
for wardrobe
pieces. Her label
has never followed
a dressed-down
style but the
ornate, sculpted
pieces always
have a
practicality.
Signature
full sleeves
came on
deftlycut and voluminous coats
that trailed tassels as the
models walked.
Rocha’s flair for
marrying historical
references with modern
must-haves came
through in several
patent biker jackets
slashed through
with cream
taffeta.
“There’s a
teenage energy
set against the
richer historical
elements,” she
said. “The
collection has
this youthful
feeling to it.”
It continues
the optimism
that has been
so noticeable
during
London
Fashion
Week.The flamboyant tulle
strewn with jewels at
Simone Rocha’s latest
fashion show caught the
optimism in London