The BBC has hired ITN’s chief executive to lead its news coverage, at a time when the broadcaster is struggling with substantial budget cuts and facing scrutiny over the impartiality of its coverage.
Deborah Turness will inherit a newsroom that is halfway through an unpopular two-year restructuring process and has lost hundreds of experienced staff through redundancies and relocations. Its audience remains enormous across the UK and abroad but it is struggling with the transition away from traditional broadcasting formats and is regularly used as punchbag by politicians.
Turness said that in an era of digital growth and innovation the BBC’s global reach gave it an edge. She said: “In the UK and around the world there has never been a greater need for the BBC’s powerful brand of impartial, trusted journalism.”
She will be paid £400,000 a year – £60,000 a year more than her predecessor, Fran Unsworth. Her job title has also been upgraded from director of news to CEO of BBC News. Her background as an on-the-ground television producer could be helpful when working alongside the BBC director general, Tim Davie, who has no experience making programmes.
Turness made her name during a decade-long stint as editor of ITV News, before moving to New York in 2013 to run the sprawling NBC News operation. The first woman to run a major US news network, she faced internal opposition as she dealt with the scandal over NBC host Brian Williams exaggerating claims about his experiences in Iraq.
After four years in that job she returned to London to oversee two NBC-backed television channels that struggled to gain traction – a relaunch of Euronews and an abandoned plan to set up an international-focused version of Sky News.
Last year Turness returned to ITN – who make news programmes for ITV, Channel 4, and Channel 5 – as chief executive, in what was perceived by many staff as a homecoming. Nevertheless, Davie persuaded her to jump ship and shape the future of the public broadcaster’s news operation – seeing off competition from internal BBC candidates such as Jonathan Munro and Jamie Angus.
Her start date has yet to be confirmed but Turness’s first significant domestic decisions are likely to include finding a replacement for Laura Kuenssberg as political editor and managing the ongoing rotation of prominent on-air presenters.
She will also have to work out whether any parts of the BBC’s news output will have to be shut down in order to meet looming budget cuts caused by years of below-inflation licence fee settlements. Any cuts are likely to cause anger among audiences and politicians, at the same time as the corporation tries to work out how to attract younger audiences who increasingly get their news from elsewhere.
There are also ongoing issues around the BBC’s attempts to define impartiality in the modern media environment, with internal and external disputes over everything from coverage of transgender issues to Westminster politics and devolution matters.
