BBC boss questions why Today show didn’t feature Newsnight exclusive
The BBC’s news boss has pointed out that a Newsnight exclusive wasn’t featured on the Today programme as she was grilled by Amol Rajan over new cost-cutting measures.
Deborah Turness, chief executive of BBC News, appeared to be frustrated that Newsnight’s NHS whistleblower story hadn’t appeared on the flagship Radio 4 show.
The piece investigated the death of two-day-old Abigail Miller at Brighton’s Royal Sussex County Hospital in January last year after an emergency C-section.
When asked about the current affairs flagship being “reformatted” after its audience fell to around 300,000 viewers, Ms Turness said the changes were about getting the best of BBC’s journalism to the maximum number of people.
Speaking on Thursday morning’s programme, she said: “Last night, Newsnight broke a really strong investigation about the NHS continuing their whistleblower series.
“It has not appeared on this programme at all.”
Ms Turness said the failure to promote the exclusive across the news brand was down to the story “sitting in a unit which is at the edge of BBC News, not at the centre”.
“The audience at Newsnight are telling us they value most the consequential conversation, debate and interviews.”
BBC News CEO Deborah Turness defends the decision to cut Newsnight’s reporters, shorten the show and drop its investigative films to focus on debates.#R4Today— BBC Radio 4 Today (@BBCr4today) November 30, 2023
She added: “We need to pull that journalism, that effort, that talent, that endeavour, to the core and, just as we’ve done with many other investigations in recent times and proven that we do deliver across all of our platforms, enhance and support it.”
Ms Turness said the Newsnight investigation revealing the six suspects in the Stephen Lawrence case was not featured on the morning programme either, despite being “rolled out across our whole organisation as a documentary and of course digital and TV platform”.
It comes after the BBC announced Newsnight was to become a 30-minute discussion show, as part of the corporation’s latest round of cost-cutting.
It said the programme was “iconic” but could not continue in its current form. Ms Turness said she had considered axing Newsnight altogether because its audience was so small.
BBC News staff were dismayed by the announcement, which will shrink the programme’s headcount from 57 to 23. Overall, 127 posts will go across the news division.
Ms Turness said: “Like every other business The BBC has to operate within its budgets. That budget is now 500 million less than it used to be due to a flat licence fee settlement and the impacts of high inflation and BBC News must carry its share, as the rest of the organisation does, too.
“Newsnight is a really powerful programme that creates amazing investigations and journalism, but it’s reaching 300,000 people on BBC Two at 10.30pm.”
Emily Maitlis, who presented the show until last year, said she was concerned that “extraordinary and exceptional journalism” would now be lost.
Newsnight’s successes include the 2019 interview with Prince Andrew, which was nominated for a Bafta and a Royal Television Society award. But ratings are in decline, falling from the 1.1 million who watched Jeremy Paxman’s final programme in 2014.
The BBC was contacted for comment.
