Most news publishers who expressed a preference endorsed Kamala Harris as US president, yet Donald Trump has been returned to office.

The margin of victory for Trump, winning both the electoral college and the popular vote, also surprised many in the media and appeared to be fuelled by a campaign which focused more on courting popular podcasters than it did legacy media.

We asked senior leaders at major US news publishers what the lessons are from the presidential election on connecting with audiences.

The Guardian’s US editor Betsy Reed suggested “so-called outrage cycles” may not deserve as much coverage in future as they did not prove to be deal breakers to voters, but she believes the media did do a “pretty good job” conveying the stakes of the election.

Francesca Barber, executive director of global newsroom strategy at Politico, said trust is gained by “listening, not just opining”.

Geordie Greig, editor of The Independent which has been quickly expanding in the US, said the election should remind the media of the importance of short-form video.

Katie Davies, editor of Dailymail.com, said the election only underscored that Americans are “consuming their news in more ways than ever before”.

BBC News director of digital Naja Nielsen said the election showed it is easy to become over-reliant on polls and “nothing beats boots on the ground”.

And The Hill’s director of audience and social media Sarakshi Rai said “being fair and nonpartisan” will help build trust with audiences and show there is not “some kind of underlying agenda”.

Read on to see each of their answers in full.

‘We need to reconsider reporting of outrage cycles’

Betsy Reed, US editor – The Guardian

“Overall, I actually think the media did a pretty good job reporting on the stakes of this election. But we did make a few mistaken assumptions this time around: that people would turn away from Trump because of his dangerous rhetoric and outrageous statements; and that the enthusiasm we observed at Kamala’s rallies would be sufficient to draw voters out, outweighing very real, well-documented concerns voters had about the economy, inflation, and the party in power.

“To be fair, The Guardian and the media did extensively cover voter dissatisfaction with the economy – in particular in our “Confidence Question” series – but we need to seriously consider how much reporting resources we devote to so-called outrage cycles moving forward, when it’s clear those things aren’t ultimately decisive to undecided voters.”

Trust ‘means listening, not just opining’

Francesca Barber, executive director of global newsroom strategy at Politico

“The way people are consuming media and information is changing rapidly – this election cycle saw the power of podcasts and loyalty with relatable, trusted voices amongst specific audiences. Think Call Her Daddy and Joe Rogan as major interview moments for both Trump and Harris.

“Trust is important here: it means listening, not just opining. It means having a direct relationship to audiences in the formats they are consuming (e.g. video, audio, shareable direct messages). And it means being clear who your audience is and building expectations and habit throughout the year, so that during an election cycle, they come to you.

“At Politico, our audience relies on our voice and authority to inform their daily professional lives. They rely on our geographic breadth to contextualize major global moments and our depth of reporting in each local market, to highlight the shifting policy and power dynamics beyond the horse race of an election.

“Now, we must continue to be thoughtful and creative with how and when we’re reaching our readers as we continue to keep up with the changing consumption and technological habits of our readers.”

‘Short-form video is key’

Geordie Greig, editor of The Independent

“The US election showed that, despite Trump’s attacks against many media companies, serious, independent journalism cuts through and still connects, as demonstrated by our record month in the US in September, in which we became the number one British brand in America.

“While we often think of America as being polarised, the exit polling also demonstrated just how many voters see themselves as independent. So there’s clearly a significant appetite for unbiased, authoritative news, and an opportunity for trusted brands to deliver this.

“Readers across the political spectrum seem increasingly to distrust what candidates are saying, but they still want to feel that they know the facts about the issues.

“More broadly, this election showed news brands what we already know. Audiences don’t consume news in the same way they did even ten years ago. Short-form video is key, and you need to meet audiences where they are. That’s why we stepped Independent TV into a higher gear and renewed our focus on platforms like TikTok.

“It remains to be seen whether the industry will experience a second ‘Trump bump,’ but all we can do is continue reporting, and finding our audience wherever they consume news. What we do is on the tin: we will stay independent.”

Audience wants ‘hard facts and unbiased news coverage’

Sarakshi Rai, director of audience and social media – The Hill

“The Hill paid close attention to what our audience wanted from political media outlets this election cycle – hard facts and unbiased news coverage along with data and in-depth analysis. The media needs to embrace being fair and nonpartisan in order to build trust with readers of all political stripes and convince them that there’s not some kind of underlying agenda to their coverage.

“There’s no denying that trust in media outlets has been low this election cycle and at The Hill we followed an editorial policy of not telling our readers what to think but allowing them to understand the facts and make up their own minds. It’s essential that news organisations reach audiences where they are at, not force them to meet them where they want them to be with their coverage that might skew one way or another.

“At The Hill we met our audience exactly where they were, whether it was with our video coverage, data analysis or editorial coverage. It’s not a one size fits all approach, and we made sure we had elements that people wanted from media outlets. Our partnership with Decision Desk also drove audience interest with a data and facts-first approach with polling aggregate numbers throughout the election cycle as well as a forecasting model and live election results.

“And as we looked deeper at the numbers, the results speak for themselves between Election Day and the day after – we not only gave our audiences what they wanted but grew it. TheHill.com saw 9.44 million unique visitors, over 18.34 million page views and 3.43 million video starts on the site.”

‘Americans are consuming their news in more ways than ever before’

Katie Davies, editor-in-chief – Dailymail.com

Dailymail.com saw record levels of traffic on election day, one of its highest-performing days in the US to date, and direct homepage traffic was the highest it had been for two years.

Press Gazette understands Daily Mail Tiktok videos were viewed a record 6.5 billion times in October and 5.3 billion times in September, and its election coverage on the platform received 427 million video views and led to almost 400,000 new followers.

The brand worked with polling firm JL Partners which projected a 287-251 win for Trump, which turned out to be closer to his actual 312 – 226 win than many other pollsters.

Katie Davies said: “This election cycle underscores the fact that Americans, now more than ever, are consuming their news in more ways than ever before. The Daily Mail US broke dozens of exclusives, sat down with insiders and people in power, and published some of the most accurate polling out there and we saw record-breaking amounts of traffic to our website leading up to and throughout the election, particularly on our mobile homepage. But we’ve also seen a tremendous appetite from our users to consume their news in new ways, be that TikTok, our social channels, video and podcasts and more.

“Under the Trump administration we’re going to continue doing what the Daily Mail does best – focus on the engaging stories our readers want to talk about in their daily lives – at the office, the bar, the school run etc. Our election numbers are a clear vote from readers that they love what we are doing and we will continue to hold those in power to account while maintaining our fun, audacious and distinctive Daily Mail voice.”

‘It’s easy to get over-reliant on polls’

Naja Nielsen, director of digital, channel and weather – BBC News

“I oversaw the BBC’s coverage from our Washington Bureau and, I have to say, I think BBC News overall covered it well.

“What in my opinion made BBC News stand out from especially a lot of the US media, was our impartiality and our focus on the voters.

“We also reported and analysed various polls, but it’s easy to get over-reliant on polls and as we have seen, once again, when it comes to gauging the mood among the voters nothing beats boots on the ground and our correspondents and reporters talking to the voters everywhere.

“On top of that first-hand reporting, our Voter Voices initiative proved very valuable. It’s a panel of voters with all types of views and backgrounds that feed into our reporting and help us present a range of views. There are many nuances in the viewpoints of Republicans as well as Democrats and all those who support neither and we wanted to capture that breadth.

“We are also lucky to have a team of expert Washington bureaux who know the country and its politics inside out and we were able to give audiences the benefit of a team at the top of their game – explaining the nuances of the US system and culture to a global audience.

“Our commitment to impartial and transparency also makes us uniquely placed in the US, as well as in the UK. Our investment in BBC Verify US made it possible for us to counter misinformation, and our curious and critical approach to all opinions is something a lot of people are looking for in these often very divisive times.

“This saw us reach huge numbers of people who were coming to us for a source of news they could trust – to cut through the noise and get a clear view. We never take sides, and I genuinely see all of our journalists reporting with open, curious and critical minds. I was following a lot of UK and US coverage and when it became clear, Trump would win, you could hear the tone change across most of US Election shows in one way or another, whereas our team kept being on the ball, reporting the story with no agenda.

“On Tuesday and Wednesday alone our digital journalism attracted around 61 million users – showing what an appetite there is, not only for news on the US election, but for the clarity and impartial view that only the BBC can give.”

The post Polls, trust and video shorts: Lessons for news publishers from US election appeared first on Press Gazette.

BBC-funded Local Democracy Reporters working at various publishers have complained of low pay and being asked to write stories outside their brief.

The Local Democracy Reporting Service is an effort to fill gaps in the UK’s regional public service reporting. Under the current contracts, 18 media companies employ 165 LDRs to cover patches across the UK, producing stories that are distributed for free to the BBC and more than 1,000 other news titles around the country.

The BBC is due to retender contracts for the scheme next year.

Publishers who successfully bid for LDR contracts are provided approximately £38,000 (outside London) or £40,500 (inside) by the BBC annually to cover the expenses associated with employing each reporter, including salary, national insurance and management costs.

The contracts also stipulate minimum salaries for LDRs of around £24,000 outside London and £27,000 inside. The differences between the stipulated minimum salaries and the total sums allotted by the BBC have previously led to clashes between the NUJ and LDR contract holders: the union accused Newsquest last year of withholding BBC cash from its reporters, which the company and two peer organisations disputed.

Under the terms of the contracts LDR salaries are guaranteed to increase by either 1.5% or in line with the retail prices index — whichever is less. LDR partners may increase pay above this rate at their discretion, however, and indeed the largest LDR contract holder, local publishing giant Reach, was paying non-trainee LDRs outside London a £31,200 minimum last year.

The NUJ said in a statement following a recent Local Democracy Reporter summit there are “significant differences in rates offered journalists carrying out the same work across different locations.

“Employers are expected to pay, as a minimum, their own salary levels if they are higher than the BBC set minimum. However, the NUJ has highlighted an existing lack of transparency by many LDRS suppliers on approaches to regional and local pay.

“In some cases, LDRs have been given only the 1.5% uplift in April when their newsroom colleagues have received higher annual pay increases. LDRs of similar experience can be paid about £5,000 more than colleagues elsewhere in the same group.”

The union has called on the BBC to stipulate that LDRs “cannot be given less than the general pay increase enjoyed by their colleagues” and to make sure that “local minimum pay rates of suppliers are transparent to their workforce so LDRs can be assured contractual arrangements involving public money are being adhered to”.

Asked about the NUJ criticisms, a spokesperson for the BBC said: “The BBC is completely committed to the ongoing success and development of the LDRS, and we will shortly be announcing a new funding model for the 2025-2027 contract period.

“As part of that process, the BBC remains in discussion with industry partners to ensure increased funding is reflected in salary levels.”

Some Local Democracy Reporters report being pushed to do stories outside their contracted beat

As well as the pay issues, the union said it was “increasingly concerned” at reports from LDRs at the recent LDR Summit that they were being pushed to publish more than the maximum 40 stories a month they are contracted for, and that some had been used “as substitute reporters” to cover things that would typically be assigned to a non-LDR journalist.

Chris Morley, the NUJ’s northern and Midlands senior organiser, said in the statement: “The number of LDR members at our summit and their geographical and employer spread meant this was a representative snapshot of what is happening on the ground in the LDRS.

“It was tangible that many LDRs felt they were being unreasonably pushed around to do things that were of dubious relevance to the LDRS and its original brief. There was frustration that publishers were seeking to extract more and more from them to the obvious detriment to the founding principles of the scheme and other partners of the service.

“Our members feel the BBC is not doing enough to keep its contractual obligations adhered to and in reality are presiding over a laissez faire, permissive regime where the boundaries are being constantly pushed to the expense of the core duty to provide unique content public interest journalism.

“The upcoming retendering process is a golden opportunity for the BBC to reset the service to solve the pay anomalies for LDRs and to make sure the journalistic success of the scheme is not tarnished by any selfish opportunism of suppliers.”

What Local Democracy Reporters say

One Local Democracy Reporter, who works at a National World title, told Press Gazette they had been stuck near the minimum BBC-stipulated salary for years.

They said: “I’ve been ‘lucky’ in that usually I do have the time to pursue stories and haven’t felt pressured to do much outside of the LDRS remit. And when that has happened, I’ve usually stated that it’s not in the remit, and that’s fine.”

But they added that on papers such as theirs “where roles have been cut year after year, there is, I find, a pressure to not let the team down and sometimes that means writing up a press release that I normally wouldn’t have covered”.

A Reach LDR who spoke to Press Gazette said the situation described by the NUJ did not match their experience. They were not under pressure to write high-traffic stories and that they have been able to push back when editors have “overstepped the mark”.

“My only minor complaint is they could pay us more,” they said. “I have thought about retraining and doing something with a higher salary. But I enjoy the job quite a lot to be honest.”

The post NUJ voices Local Democracy Reporter concern over pay and working outside their brief appeared first on Press Gazette.

Press Gazette is honoured to announce the finalists for the British Journalism Awards 2024.

This year’s British Journalism Awards attracted 750 entries encompassing every major news organisation in the UK.

The finalists are announced today following a three-week process involving 80 independent judges and two days of jury-style meetings.

In order to make the shortlists work has to be revelatory, show journalistic skill and rigour and serve the public interest.

The winners will be announced on 12 December at a dinner in London hosted by Radio 2 presenter and journalist Jeremy Vine.

Details here about how to book tickets.

The shortlist for News Provider of the Year will be announced following a second round of judging. The winners of Journalist of the Year, the Marie Colvin Award and the Public Service prize will be announced on the night.

Chairman of judges and Press Gazette editor-in-chief Dominic Ponsford said: “Without journalism, Boris Johnson would still be prime minister, wronged postmasters would not have a voice and victims of the infected blood scandal would not have a chance of compensation.

“The 2024 British Journalism Awards shortlists celebrate the stories which would not be told without journalists willing to shine a light on uncomfortable truths and publications brave enough to back them up.

“Congratulations to all our finalists and thank you to everyone who took the time to enter the British Journalism Awards.

“In a media world which is increasingly controlled by a few parasitic technology platforms it is more important than ever to celebrate the publishers willing to invest in and support quality journalism that makes a difference for the better in our world.”

British Journalism Awards 2024 shortlist in full:

Social Affairs, Diversity & Inclusion Journalism

Natasha Cox, Ahmed El Shamy, Rosie Garthwaite — BBC Eye Investigations

• Perfume’s Dark Secret

Jessica Hill — Schools Week

• Missing from mainstream: Excluded children with nowhere to go
• ‘Out of sight, out of mind’: The rise of unregistered alternative provision
• Hospital schools: On the mental health crisis frontline

Sasha Baker, Valeria Rocca — The Bureau of Investigative Journalism

• The parents group at the centre of a rollback of trans rights
• ‘One day they may thank us for that “abuse”’: Inside the Bayswater Support Group

Rianna Croxford, Ruth Evans, Cate Brown, Ed McGown, Tom Stone, Ed Campbell, Karen Wightman — BBC Panorama

• The Abercrombie Guys: The Dark Side of Cool

Daniel Hewitt, Imogen Barrer, Mariah Cooper, Reshma Rumsey — ITV News

• Nowhere to go: Britain’s homeless emergency

Louise Tickle — Tortoise Media

• Taking the stand: Grace’s story
• Taking the stand: Emma’s story

Abi Kay — Farmers Weekly

• Level the Field
• Is there a problem with young farmer culture?
• Editor’s view: Facing hard truths about young farmer culture

Joshua Nelken-Zitser, Ida Reihani, Kit Gillet — Business Insider

• Iran will pay for gender-transition surgery, but it comes at a cost — your dignity

Features Journalism

Sophie Elmhirst — 1843 magazine, The Economist and The Guardian

• The last stand of the call-centre worker
• Chortle chortle, scribble scribble: inside the Old Bailey with Britain’s last court reporters
• Last love: a romance in a care home

Jenny Kleeman — The Guardian

• America’s premier pronatalists on having ‘tons of kids’ to save the world: ‘There are going to be countries of old people starving to death’
• She was accused of faking an incriminating video of teenage cheerleaders. She was arrested, outcast and condemned. The problem? Nothing was fake after all
• ‘I know someone who played noughts and crosses on one’: meet the top surgeon who burned his initials on a patient’s liver

Sirin Kale — The Guardian

• ‘My child was drowning’: life and death on an English maternity ward
• The life and tragic death of John Balson: how a true crime producer documented his own rising horror
• The Russell murders: is Michael Stone in prison for a brutal crime he didn’t commit?

Zoe Beaty — The Independent

• How Nigel Farage took over my hometown – and why Keir Starmer should be worried
• My battle to bring a predatory Met Police officer from the same unit as Wayne Couzens to justice
• ‘A court packed with those who know their way around already, and jails are too full to take them’

Inderdeep Bains — Daily Mail

• My doctors insist it’s time I died – but I will fight them: Extraordinary case of 19-year-old woman suffering from Charlie Gard condition battling medics’ attempts to ‘condemn her to death’
• Sudiksha: ‘Condemned to Die in Secret’ – The Shocking Story of the 19-year-old’s fight to live

David James Smith — The Independent

• How did so many miss the sinister warning signs about James Bulger’s killer for so long?
• Is Lucy Letby innocent? I’m a miscarriage of justice investigator – and here’s what I think…
• The wife of this Murdoch executive has been missing since the Sixties – will her body now be found?

Fiona Hamilton — The Times

• Nottingham attacks: ‘We have no faith in the police. We want justice’
• ‘A horrible way to die … and no doctors can help you’
• Realising Sarah Everard got into a sex offender’s car was horrific

Barbara McMahon — Daily Mail

• Ghislaine Maxwell ‘was tortured in prison – now she’s ready for a comeback’: Jeffrey Epstein’s socialite pimp runs half marathons at low-security Florida lock-up and is now ‘focused and motivated’ for her appeal next week, her brother reveals
• ‘I shook Epstein’s hand and asked him what my daughter would be doing’: Virginia Roberts’s father describes dropping her off at paedophile’s mansion, meeting ‘despicable’ Ghislaine… and blasts Prince Andrew for showing ‘no remorse’
• Black Widow who ‘relished killing and had no regard for human life, even for children’: Griselda Blanco shot a child in the head when she was 11 and rose to be Miami’s drug kingpin. As she’s immortalised on Netflix, her son recalls his ‘fearsome’ mother

Local Journalism

Abi Whistance, Joshi Herrmann, Kate Knowles, Mollie Simpson, Jothi Gupta — Mill Media

• Special investigation: The collapsing world of Liverpool’s charity kingpin
• Investigation: The spectacular rise and sudden fall of Gurpaal Judge
• Exclusive: How did a semi in Harpurhey sell for £1.8m?

Richard Newman, Jennifer O’Leary, Gwyneth Jones, Chris Thornton — BBC Spotlight

• Katie: Coerced and Killed

Sam McBride — Belfast Telegraph

• Lough Neagh has become a scene of Biblical disaster, and Stormont was central to its destruction
• Killing Edgar podcast

Chris Burn — The Yorkshire Post

• Building societies scandal: Yorkshire victims reveal shocking stories – and plead for action to be taken
• Philips Trust: FCA got ‘Ponzi scheme’ warning on firm at heart of £138m building society scandal – 18 months before collapse
• Leeds, Newcastle and Nottingham Building Societies to pay tens of millions to Philips Trust victims

Jane Haynes — Birmingham Mail and Birmingham Mail/Post

• Teacher’s ‘life blown apart’ in onslaught of hate as false racism claim goes viral
• The truth exposed about ‘secretive’ council meeting on equal pay crisis in Birmingham
• ‘Like a prison’ – the tower block for homeless families that has 8pm curfew and no visitors allowed

Wendy Robertson — The Bridge

• The Bridge newsletter

Health & Life Sciences Journalism

Rebecca Thomas — The Independent

• Mental health patients ‘raped and sexually assaulted’ as NHS abuse scandal revealed
• Nicholas’s story: ‘I’ve been locked up for 10 years because I’m autistic. Is a chance at life too much to ask?’
• Revealed: NHS regulator’s ‘culture of fear’ that leaves rogue nurses free to abuse patients

Fin Johnston — The Bureau of Investigative Journalism

• Science for sale: Philip Morris’s web of payments to fund tobacco research
• Inside the strategy doc Philip Morris never meant you to see
• Tobacco state: why Japan was the perfect testing ground for Philip Morris

Hannah Barnes — The New Statesman

• The trauma ward
• The Cass Review into children’s gender care should shame us all
• Hundreds of doctors are challenging the BMA’s stance on puberty blockers

Robbie Boyd, Eamonn Matthews, Steve Grandison, Ian Bendelow, Sophie Borland, Katie O’Toole, Islay Stacey, Ali Watt, Frances Peters — Quicksilver Media for Channel 4 Dispatches

• Undercover A&E: NHS in Crisis

Ellie Pitt, Cree Haughton, Justina Simpson, Ellie Swinton, Patrick Russell, Liam Ayers — ITV News

• The Dark Side of Cosmetic Surgery

Martin Bagot — Daily Mirror

• Day in the life of a dentist – and why it’s nothing like you imagine as NHS nears collapse
• Britain’s dental health crisis exposed as hundreds of children in hospital with bad teeth
• Urgent warning amid fears cosmetic fillers could cause immune system problems

Hanna Geissler — Daily Express

• ‘I’m terminally ill – assisted dying must be legalised so my daughter won’t see me suffer’
• Assisted dying ‘allowed me to mostly forget’ fears, says Aussie man hit by brain tumour
• Dame Esther’s assisted dying petition delivered to Prime Minister’s doorstep

Crime & Legal Affairs Journalism

Sue Mitchell, Rob Lawrie, Joel Moors, Winifred Robinson, Dan Clarke, Philip Sellars, Tom Brignell, Mom Tudie — BBC

• To Catch a Scorpion
• How we found Europe’s most wanted migrant-smuggler
• Why the BBC could track down a people-smuggling kingpin before the police

Gabriel Pogrund, Katie Tarrant — The Sunday Times

• Millionaire’s ‘sex worker immigration scandal’
• Hamish Ogston: millionaire accused of exploiting women ‘set up charity to help win knighthood’
• Hamish Ogston: tycoon asked Met to arrest woman who accused him of sex trafficking

Mike Sullivan, Jerome Starkey, Mike Ridley — The Sun

• ‘Distraught’ Holly Willoughby under police guard after man is arrested over terrifying ‘kidnap plot’
• Police chief faces ‘Walter Mitty’ probe after being pictured wearing Falklands medal despite being 15 at time of war

Hannah Summers — The Bureau of Investigative Journalism

• Family Court Files: mother ‘devastated’ after rapist father granted contact with child
• Family Court Files: Psychologist’s evidence used to ‘ramp up’ allegations of parental alienation
• Kristoffer White: TBIJ wins court battle to publish name of sex offender

Rianna Croxford, Ruth Evans — BBC Panorama and BBC News

• Abercrombie & Fitch ex-CEO accused of exploiting men for sex
• Lawsuit accuses Abercrombie & Fitch of funding sex-trafficking operation
• FBI investigate after ex-Abercrombie boss sex claims

Isobel Yeung, Alex Nott, Esme Ash, Nick Parnes, Alistair Jackson, Matt Bardo, Sarah Wilson — Channel 4 Dispatches

• Britain’s Unsolved Crimewave: Dispatches

Comment Journalism

Daniel Finkelstein — The Times

• Israelis and Palestinians must start to listen
• Wes Streeting’s lessons from Richard Nixon and China
• Here’s the Keir Starmer I’ve known for decades

Matthew Syed — The Sunday Times

• When I was at school a teacher could call me the P-word. We’ve come so far
• The storm is gathering, and Europe is still dithering on defending itself
• Locked in by language, we are freed by music, poetry, painting … and love

Will Hayward — WalesOnline/The Will Hayward Newsletter

• The most pointless job in Wales
• The worst political leader in the UK
• Bluster, fluster and ‘word salad’ nonsense: Vaughan Gething ducks and weaves like a boxer at the Welsh Covid Inquiry

Kitty Donaldson — i

• Part political update, part group therapy: inside Starmer’s Cabinet meeting
• Grenfell is a tragic reminder to the Tories that regulation is not a dirty word
• The winter fuel row is a painful wake up call for new Labour MPs

Frances Ryan — The Guardian

• A summer defined by men killing women and girls. This can’t go on
• Think of this: a plan to ‘warehouse’ disabled people. What kind of nation is Britain becoming?
• Cropped out, banned, airbrushed: the school photos that show the ugly face of Britain today

Duncan Robinson — The Economist

• Why the next Westminster scandal is already here
• The narcissism of minor differences, Labour Party edition
• British boomers are losing out for the first time

Specialist Journalism

Peter Blackburn — The Doctor (by the British Medical Association)

• Nowhere left to turn
• Fears for patient care due to shortages of chronic alcohol misuse treatment Pabrinex
• Not the only failing

Lucinda Rouse, Emily Burt, Ollie Peart, Louise Hill, David Robinson, Rebecca Cooney, Andy Ricketts, Nav Pal, Til Owen — Third Sector

• The End of Charity podcast

Lucie Heath — i

• Revealed: Water firms dumped sewage 5,500 times in a year ‘illegally’
• Revealed: The hidden sewage spills damaging our national parks and beauty spots
• Toxic water, debt and sewage dumping: How Britain’s rivers got so bad

Deborah Cohen, Margaret McCartney — BMJ/Pharmaceutical Journal

• Inclisiran: the ‘extremely unusual’ political influence behind the novel drug’s approval
• Galleri promises to detect multiple cancers—but new evidence casts doubt on this much hyped blood test
• Inclisiran: Government’s strategy to promote cholesterol lowering drug after Brexit was “spectacular failure,” says insider

Lee Mottershead — Racing Post

• Revealed: the racehorse owner fronting an illegal bookmaker with more than 1,000 customers
• ‘People don’t want to provide bank statements. We’ve got so many people betting with us’

Jessica Hill — Schools Week

• The rise of the parent activist
• AI’s allure is proving hard to resist for the UK’s learners
• ‘Out of sight, out of mind’: The rise of unregistered alternative provision

Emily Townsend — Health Service Journal

• Over 30 sepsis deaths linked to ‘systemic’ failings, investigation reveals
• Revealed: Doubling of average waits for critical stroke treatments
• Midwives call women in labour ‘Asian princesses’ amid ‘hostile’ environment fears

Roya Nikkhah — The Sunday Times

• Prince Harry at 40: ‘All he does is spend time looking back’
• The hospital heart-to-hearts that brought Kate and King even closer
• Prince William to build houses for homeless on his land in Cornwall

Foreign Affairs Journalism

Christina Lamb — The Sunday Times

• Gun in hand, the Israeli settler tells the Palestinian: I will kill you
• First Hamas fighters raped her. Then they shot her in the head
• ‘Who will protect us?’: Christina Lamb on the Yazidis’ dangerous journey home

Alex Crawford — Sky News

• Libya floods: Child’s voice heard under rubble as rescue teams search desperately in Derna for survivors
• Warning of Islamic State’s growing resurgence – as Sky News gets rare access to terrorists’ families
• Report from Lebanon

Kim Sengupta — The Independent

• Bombs, betrayal and burying loved ones: Plight of one Ukraine village illustrates toll of Russia’s invasion
• ‘I have buried more than 50 friends’: My life as a British soldier fighting on Ukraine’s bloody front line
• The families of hostages taken by Hamas are desperate – but can Israel get them back?

Vanessa Bowles, Jaber Badwan — Channel 4 Dispatches

• Kill Zone: Inside Gaza

Louise Callaghan — The Sunday Times

• The secret city of tunnels where hundreds live below Vegas glitz
• Claudia Sheinbaum: Meet the woman ready to be Mexico’s first presidenta
• Stand-off at Eagle Pass: welcome to the epicentre of the US border crisis

Secunder Kermani — Channel 4 News

• Palestinian detainees allege torture and sexual abuse by Israeli captors
• Myanmar military forces victims to fight in brutal civil war

Gesbeen Mohammad, Brad Manning, Nechirvan Mando, Ghoncheh Habibiazad, Esella Hawkey, Tom Giles, Hafez — ITV

• Inside Iran: The Fight for Freedom

Stuart Ramsay, Dominique van Heerden, Toby Nash — Sky News

• Haiti gang boss will take part in talks if invited – but warns foreign forces will be treated as ‘invaders’
• Aboard ‘The Beast’: What do migrants face travelling through Mexico on way to US?
• Shocking scenes in Gaza hospital as IDF moves into Khan Younis | Israel-Hamas war

Arkady Ostrovsky — 1843 magazine, The Economist

• Life and death in Putin’s gulag
• Death and destruction in a Russian city
• Life and fate (podcast)

Technology Journalism, sponsored by Amazon

Alexander Martin — The Record from Recorded Future News

• Ransomware attacks hit record level in UK, according to neglected official data
• UK government urged to get on ‘forward foot’ with ransomware instead of ‘absorbing the punches’
• Exclusive: UK to propose mandatory reporting for ransomware attacks and licensing regime for all payments

Marianna Spring — BBC News

• The real story of the news website accused of fuelling riots
• Trump supporters target black voters with faked AI images
• X takes action on deepfake network smearing UK politicians after BBC investigation

Joe Tidy — BBC World Service

• ‘Pig butchering’ scammers target BBC reporter
• Sextortion warning: In six hours, my son was dead
• Stolen test data and NHS numbers published by hospital hackers

Amanda Chicago Lewis — 1843 magazine, The Economist

• Secrets of a ransomware negotiator

Cathy Newman, Job Rabkin, Emily Roe, Sophie Braybrook, Guy Basnett, Ed Howker — Channel 4 News

• Deepfake Porn

Helen Lewis — BBC Radio 4/BBC Sounds

• Helen Lewis Has Left the Chat

Energy & Environment Journalism, sponsored by Renewable UK

Sam McBride — Belfast Telegraph

• Apocalypse Neagh: The source of 40% of NI’s water is ‘dying’
• Watch: Sam McBride’s in-depth look at Lough Neagh’s blue-green algae crisis

Josephine Moulds — The Bureau of Investigative Journalism

• Backroom deals, mystery companies and a ‘killer lake’: inside DRC’s gas and oil auction
• HSBC helped oil and gas industry raise $47bn despite net-zero pledge
• Barclays’ billions of ‘sustainable’ finance for fossil fuel industry is greenwash, says investor

Esme Stallard, Becky Dale, Sophie Woodcock, Jonah Fisher, Libby Rogers — BBC News

• Water firms illegally spilled sewage on dry days – data suggests
• BBC uncovers 6,000 possible illegal sewage spills in one year

Rachel Salvidge, Leana Hosea — The Guardian/Watershed

• The Watershed Pollution Map
• Landfills across England could be leaking harmful toxic ooze, warn experts
• ‘It’s a poison and it’s killing us’: the hidden dangers of old UK landfills

Guy Grandjean, Patrick Fee, Gwyneth Jones, Chris Thornton — BBC Spotlight Northern Ireland

• Spotlight – The Lough Neagh Monster
• Hundreds of environmental breaches by Moy Park

Sofia Quaglia — The Guardian

• ‘If we can’t fish any more, we’re going to die’: the volunteer sea patrols protecting precious Philippine waters
• From sea to plate … to sea! Hong Kong puts oyster shells to new use
• ‘It smells so bad’: glut of wild salmon creates stink in Norway and Finland

Jess Staufenberg — SourceMaterial

• Trojan Horsepower – Formula 1 and the Saudi oil lobby
• F1 lobbies for Saudi against EU green rules

Arts & Entertainment Journalism

Mark Daly, Mona McAlinden, Shelley Jofre, Jax Sinclair, Karen Wightman, Hayley Hassall — BBC Panorama

• The Dark Side of Ballet Schools

Jonathan Dean — The Times and The Sunday Times

• Oasis reunion and Wembley gigs next year … is that definitely, maybe?
• Ridley Scott: I didn’t need historians to make my Napoleon epic
• Olly Alexander on Eurovision: ‘I was trying not to have a breakdown’

Rachael Healy — The Guardian and Observer

• ‘At the start you get molested and by 45 you’re too old to work’ – the secret misery of women working in TV
• Fresh crisis at ‘toxic’ Strictly as ex-staff claim they faced sexualised comments and cruelty
• ‘The outrageousness of what Louis CK did is totally lost’: the film about the backlash faced by his accusers

Tom Bryant — Daily Mirror

• BBC’s Huw Edwards scandal teen breaks silence in first interview – ‘I felt groomed’
• Huw Edwards scandal teen: Why I first tried to protect BBC star but now feel shame
• Paul O’Grady’s beloved dog nuzzled star’s shoulder as devoted husband battled to save him

Lucy Osborne, Stephanie Kirchgaessner — The Guardian and Observer

• ‘I honest to God believe I was drugged’: magician David Copperfield’s alleged victims speak out
• The FBI investigated David Copperfield for two years. The claim that he was ‘exonerated’ was widely embraced. Was he?
• ‘Magic David called’: David Copperfield repeatedly contacted Jeffrey Epstein

Clemmie Moodie, Hannah Hope, Scarlet Howes — The Sun

• Strictly pro Giovanni Pernice probed over serious complaints by 3 ‘traumatised’ contestants as BBC ‘gathers evidence’
• Strictly Come Dancing bosses make huge changes to show after Giovanni Pernice quits
• Strictly bombshell as Amanda Abbington demands backstage footage of her and Giovanni as she is diagnosed with PTSD

Carolyn Atkinson, Olivia Skinner — BBC Radio 4 Front Row

• The British Museum’s missing gems
• Painting stolen in art heist more than 30 years ago returned to Glasgow museum

Rosamund Urwin, Charlotte Wace — The Times and The Sunday Times

• Russell Brand accused of rape, sexual assaults and abuse
• How The Times and The Sunday Times investigated Russell Brand
• ‘I felt used and abused’ on Arthur: alleged Russell Brand victim speaks

New Journalist of the Year

Rafe Uddin — Financial Times

• Labour loses Muslim support over stance on Israel-Hamas ceasefire
• Reform UK’s unusual structure with Nigel Farage in the middle
• How Post Office lawyers pushed boundaries in UK sub-postmasters scandal

Sammy Gecsoyler — The Guardian

• ‘We’re going to see people dying on the streets’: homeless refugee crisis grips Liverpool
• ‘Rat bites and chronic asthma’: schools on frontline of UK housing crisis
• Met police agree six-figure payout to student hit by baton at protest

Kaf Okpattah — ITV News, ITV News London

• Whistleblower reveals corruption and collusion inside Wandsworth Prison
• The fraud scammers putting people out of pocket by cloning phone numbers

Simar Bajaj — The Guardian, New Scientist

• Everyone is on their phones. But is it really phone addiction we’re experiencing?
• The surprising mental health and brain benefits of weight-loss drugs
• He was shot in the throat. Now he saves gun victims as a trauma surgeon in Baltimore

Nimra Shahid — The Bureau of Investigative Journalism

• Santander arranged billion-dollar oil bond after making green pledge
• Santander weakened fossil fuel policy after raising billions for gas projects

Venetia Menzies — The Sunday Times

• Anxiety drug pregabalin killed my son — and hundreds more are dying from it
• The company taking refugees out of Gaza — and ‘making millions’
• After the earthquake: how Morocco is rebuilding

Oliver Marsden — The Sunday Times/Al Jazeera

• Hero taxi driver who saved scores from Hamas faces hatred from both sides
• Dodging Israeli rockets with Ghana’s UN peacekeepers
• Israeli strikes on Lebanon: Attacks are causing wildfires across south

Yasmin Rufo — BBC News

• London mayor election: Bots, misleading URLs cause voter confusion
• Ulez expansion: Contested claims examined
• Ulez: More than 300 cameras damaged or stolen in four months

Sports Journalism

Jacob Whitehead — The Athletic

• Special report: Newcastle United sponsor Noon and shocking allegations of worker mistreatment
• Saudi Arabia investigates worker mistreatment allegations after The Athletic report on Newcastle sponsor Noon
• Special report: ‘Disturbing’ safety issues at Hillsborough 35 years after disaster

Oliver Brown — The Telegraph

• Angela Carini was sent unforgivably into harm’s way by gutless IOC cowards
• After my grandfather hugged Jesse Owens, the Nazis told him: ‘Never embrace a black man again’
• Michael Vaughan: If I had gone through this racism ordeal at 80, I would have wanted to be shot

Simon Lock, Rob Davies, Jacob Steinberg — The Bureau of Investigative Journalism / The Guardian

• Abramovich’s hidden football deals during Chelsea’s time at the top (TBIJ) and Chelsea FC face new questions over how Roman Abramovich funded success (Guardian)
• ‘I worked for Abramovich?’: footballers were owned by oligarch via offshore deals (TBIJ) and Revealed: Abramovich, the super-agent and the footballers owned as ‘commodities’ (Guardian)
• Leaked documents reveal Abramovich is still connected to Vitesse (TBIJ) and Abramovich loans fund owner of Dutch football club, leaked documents suggest (Guardian)

Jacob Judah — 1843 magazine, The Economist

• The strange case of the disappearing football team

Riath Al-Samarrai — Daily Mail

• Drifting through life without gold medals, tortured by his past, and now claims of bankruptcy… How did petulant Wiggins fall so spectacularly from his golden bike?
• Seb Coe explains why he’s HAPPY to break 128 years of Olympic tradition by handing out cash for gold… and reveals Roman Abramovich’s unlikely role in athletics
• The curious case of Jade Jones’ drugs test and why the Chinese might be quick to ask questions, writes RIATH AL-SAMARRAI

Ian Herbert — Daily Mail

• Looting and rioting, setting fire to police officers and hunting down English fans… fearful European clubs are turning a blind eye to shadowy leaders of their untouchable ultras
• Thirty-five years after horror of the Hillsborough tragedy, Mail Sport can reveal that incredibly the stadium is still not fit for purpose with poor stewarding, inadequate turnstiles and a problem tunnel
• Grubby, classless, the five-year legal battle over plane crash victim Emiliano Sala takes us into football’s sewers… where players are pawns and chronically inept clubs desperately try to save cash

Matt Lawton — The Times

• Man City launch unprecedented legal action against Premier League
• ‘The horror is everywhere’ – inside Lord Coe’s secret trip to Ukraine
• Russian athletes should be allowed at Olympics, says government

Um-E-Aymen Babar — Sky Sports

• How does endometriosis affect women in sport?
• USA cricket teen on tackling social media trolls, South Asian heritage and 2028 Olympic goals
• Um-E-Aymen Babar ok Tiktok

Campaign of the Year

Caroline Wheeler —The Sunday Times: Bloody Disgrace

• Thousands dead, 40 years of cover-up: time for justice for infected blood victims
• At last: promise of £10bn payout for infected blood victims
• Jeremy Hunt: I promised a dying friend I’d end infected blood scandal

Patrick Butler, Josh Halliday, John Domokos — The Guardian: Unpaid Carers

• Carers threatened with prosecution over minor breaches of UK benefit rules
• ‘Injustice’: 92-year-old with dementia told by DWP to repay £7k in disability allowance
• I’m under attack and fighting back: the scandal trapping carers

Computer Weekly editorial team — Computer Weekly: Post Office Scandal

• Post Office Horizon scandal explained: Everything you need to know
• Fujitsu staff instructed how to bid for government contracts during self-imposed ban
• Post Office Horizon replacement project labelled ‘unachievable’ as taxpayer bill reaches £1bn

David Cohen — Evening Standard: Show Respect

• Boys, porn and the alarming way they talk about girls – a special investigation
• School pupils tell how they are victims of sexual harassment every day
• Show some respect: Standard launches campaign with £500k to tackle sexist abuse in schools

Lucie Heath — i: Save Britain’s Rivers

• Save Britain’s Rivers: i challenges all parties to commit to election manifesto
• Revealed: The hidden sewage spills damaging our national parks and beauty spots
• National Trust signs up to i’s Save Britain’s Rivers manifesto

Hanna Geissler, Giles Sheldrick — Daily Express: Give Us Our Last Rights

• My assisted dying petition proves Brits are compassionate – now Rishi Sunak must act
• ‘I’m terminally ill – assisted dying must be legalised so my daughter won’t see me suffer’
• Assisted dying debate must move on to how law will change, MND campaigner says

Amy Clare Martin — The Independent: IPP Jail Sentences

• Revealed: 16 years in prison for stealing a bike and no hope of release – as 7 trapped in jail kill themselves
• ‘He looked like a starving dog on the floor’: Prisoner trapped on indefinite jail term driven to hunger strike
• Father imprisoned for 12 years for stealing mobile phone under ‘cruel’ indefinite jail term reunited with son

Martin Bagot, Jason Beattie — Daily Mirror: Save NHS Dentistry

• Dentists warn ‘rescue plan’ will fail to end crisis as 60,000 people sign our petition
• Day in the life of a dentist – and why it’s nothing like you imagine as NHS nears collapse
• Britain’s dental health crisis exposed as hundreds of children in hospital with bad teeth

Photojournalism

Thomas Dworzak — 1843 magazine, The Economist

André Luís Alves — 1843 magazine, The Economist

Giles Clarke — CNN Digital

Nichole Sobecki — 1843 magazine, The Economist

Dimitris Legakis — Athena Picture Agency

Stefan Rousseau — PA Media

Hannah McKay — Reuters

Interviewer of the Year

Alice Thomson — The Times

• Ed Davey: ‘Being a carer is harder than being a politician’
• Peter Kyle: It was 5am. A woman said, ‘Your partner is dead ’
• Emma Barnett: ‘The pain was so bad, I was losing the will to live’

Christina Lamb — The Sunday Times

• ICC prosecutor: UK didn’t blitz the IRA — Israel needs that restraint
• The president’s daughter (and Instagram star) wanted by Interpol
• David Cameron: ‘Why did I take the job? Rishi Sunak asked!’

Laura Kuenssberg — Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, BBC News

• Baroness Mone and the PPE Scandal
• How Can We Protect Our Children Online?
• Inside No 11 with Chancellor Rachel Reeves

Charlotte Edwardes — The Guardian

• ‘You asked me questions I’ve never asked myself’: Keir Starmer’s most personal interview yet
• ‘Dismissing global warming? That was a joke’: Jeremy Clarkson on fury, farming and why he’s a changed man
• ‘The levels of attack are extraordinary’: Gary Lineker on punditry, podcasts – and why he won’t stop speaking his mind

Nick Ferrari — LBC

• Labour leader Keir Starmer joins Nick Ferrari to take your calls
• Champagne and caviar: Esther Rantzen reveals plans for final moments as she pushes for assisted dying law change
• Nigel Farage joins Nick Ferrari

Samantha Poling — BBC

• How I confronted Emma Caldwell’s killer
• Catching a Killer: The Murder of Emma Caldwell
• Who Killed Emma?

Piers Morgan — Piers Morgan Uncensored

• “Richard Gadd is PSYCHOTIC” Baby Reindeer’s ‘Real’ Martha Fiona Harvey
• Kevin Spacey Breaks Down As He Faces Debt Of MILLIONS
• Piers Morgan vs Rishi Sunak Round 2 | Prime Minister Discusses Israel-Hamas War, NHS, Rwanda & More

Paul Brand — ITV News

• Interview with Rishi Sunak
• Interview with Ed Davey
• Interview with Keir Starmer

(View all three interviews here)

Politics Journalism

Jim Pickard, Anna Gross — Financial Times

• Keir Starmer accepted £76,000 of freebies including tickets to over 20 football games
• Keir Starmer faces backlash over early failure to disclose £16,200 in donor-funded clothing
• Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves declared clothing donations as office support

Pippa Crerar — The Guardian

• Kemi Badenoch accused of ‘bullying and traumatising’ staff
• Rishi Sunak aide placed bet on election date days before announcement
• Tories putting party reputation before sexual assault claim, says alleged victim

Rowena Mason, Henry Dyer, Matthew Weaver — The Guardian

• Biggest Tory donor said looking at Diane Abbott makes you ‘want to hate all black women’
• ‘No room for the Indians?’: Tory donor Frank Hester suggested staff climb on train roof
• Revealed: Sunak flown to Leeds for private tour of Frank Hester’s office weeks after £5m donation

Job Rabkin, Darshna Soni, Ed Gove, Saif Aledros, Georgina Lee, Lee Sorrell — Channel 4 News

• Undercover Inside Reform’s Campaign

Beth Rigby — Sky News

• Election exit poll
• The Battle for Number 10: A Sky News Leaders’ Special
• How Reform fares on Thursday will also determine the Conservatives fate

Caroline Wheeler — The Sunday Times

• Commons worker arrested after allegedly spying for China
• My MP husband Andrew Bridgen was captured by antivax ‘cult’
• At last: promise of £10bn payout for infected blood victims

Jane Merrick — i

• Thousands of disabled people died after ‘Covid treatment withheld’, inquiry to probe
• ‘My daughter was allowed to die of Covid because she had Down’s syndrome’
• Labour manifesto missing pensioners’ winter fuel and bus pass pledges

Steven Swinford — The Times

• Britain and US launch airstrikes on Houthi targets
• Jeremy Hunt looks for £9bn to balance his budget
• Teachers and nurses should get above-inflation pay rise, ministers told

Business, Finance and Economics Journalism, sponsored by Starling Bank

Simon Murphy — Daily Mirror & Sunday Mirror

• Fujitsu boss lives on ‘blood money’ with £2m mansion as we suffer, says Post Office victim
• Provider boasting of ‘compassion’ threatens daughter with court action over £50k care bill for her 93-year-old amputee mother with dementia
• Mirror tracks down former Post Office IT chief that Horizon inquiry insisted couldn’t be found

Ed Conway — Sky News

• Surge in sale of UK-made cars to Russia’s neighbours shows how it’s beating sanctions
• British firms’ exports are almost certainly bolstering Russia’s war machine in Ukraine, Sky data analysis finds
• How British financial services aid sale of Russian gas on European market | Ukraine War

Tom Bergin — Reuters

• Online-gambling giants conquer U.S. with tactics deemed too tough for Britain

Gill Plimmer, Robert Smith — Financial Times

• Chinese state banks are lenders to Thames Water’s parent company
• Thames Water owners pile group with debt
• Thames Water shareholders backed away over regulator’s debt demands

Siddharth Philip, Benedikt Kammel, Anthony Palazzo, Katharine Gemmell, Sabah Meddings — Bloomberg News

• Bogus Supplier of Jet-Engine Parts May Have Faked Employees Too
• Ghost in the Machine: How Fake Parts Infiltrated Airline Fleets
• UK Fraud Cops Make Arrest in Fake Airplane Parts Scandal

Anna Isaac, Alex Lawson — The Guardian

• Sellafield apologises after guilty plea over string of cybersecurity failings
• Nuclear Narnia: why is Sellafield Europe’s most dangerous industrial site?
• Sellafield nuclear site hacked by groups linked to Russia and China

Danny Fortson — The Sunday Times

• Mike Lynch: Flown to the US in chains, now he is free … and talking
• Inside Mike Lynch’s last stand as $11bn fraud trial looms
• The app that promised an NHS ‘revolution’ then went down in flames

Online Video Journalism

Alex Rothwell, Alastair Good, Yasmin Butt, Pauline Den Hartog Jager, Jack Feeney, Federica De Caria, Kasia Sobocinska, Stephanie Bosset — The Times and The Sunday Times

• Russell Brand accused of rape, sexual assaults and abuse | Investigation
• Undercover in a British prison: security flaws exposed | Times Investigation
• ‘Illegal’ conspiracy theory school exposed | Times Investigation

Andrew Harding — BBC News

• BBC tracks down smuggler behind Channel crossing which killed Sara, 7

Mohamed Ibrahim, Owen Pinnel, Mouna Ba, Wael El-Saadi, Feras Al Ajrami — BBC Eye Investigations

• Gaza 101: Emergency Rescue

Tom Pettifor, Matthew Young, Daniel Dove — Daily Mirror

• Has the man who killed Jill Dando finally been found?
• Jill Dando murder: Man wanted for questioning matches features of Serbian assassin
• Jill Dando murder: Key witness identifies Serbian assassin

Lucinda Herbert, Iain Lynn — National World Video

• Lured To Her Death: The Murder of Sasha Marsden

Reem Makhoul, Robert Leslie, Clancy Morgan, Amelia Kosciulek, Matilda Hay, Liz Kraker, Dorian Barranco, Barbara Corbellini Duarte, Erica Berenstein, Yasser Abu Wazna — Business Insider

• 4 Gazans show how war devastated their coastline

Piers Morgan — Piers Morgan Uncensored

• “Richard Gadd is PSYCHOTIC” Baby Reindeer’s ‘Real’ Martha Fiona Harvey

Ben Marino, Joe Sinclair, Veronica Kan-Dapaah, Petros Gioumpasis, Greg Bobillot — Financial Times

• Chinese brokers launder hundreds of millions for global crime groups | FT Film

Investigation of the Year

Scarlet Howes, Mike Hamilton, Alex West — The Sun

• Ex-BBC presenter Huw Edwards charged with making 37 indecent images of children, ‘shared on WhatsApp’
• Huw Edwards used position of power to groom young people for 6 years even sending pictures from BBC desk to impress them
• We’re still suffering, say parents at centre of Huw Edwards scandal as they slam BBC for lack of answers after he quits

Rosamund Urwin, Charlotte Wace, Paul Morgan-Bentley, Esella Hawkey, Imogen Wynell Mayow, Alice McShane, Florence Kennard, Ian Bendelow, Victoria Noble, Alistair Jackson, Sarah Wilson, Geraldine McKelvie — The Sunday Times, The Times, Hardcash Productions, Channel Four Dispatches Investigations Unit

• Russell Brand accused of rape, sexual assaults and abuse
• How The Times and The Sunday Times investigated Russell Brand
• Russell Brand: In Plain Sight

Alex Thomson, Nanette van der Laan — Channel 4 News

• Post Office Scandal

Paul Morgan-Bentley — The Times

• I worked undercover in one of UK’s most dangerous jails — without checks
• My son died in HMP Bedford. I never felt he was safe there
• Undercover in a British prison: security flaws exposed | Times Investigation

Ruth Evans, Oliver Newlan, Leo Telling, Sasha Hinde, Hayley Clarke, Karen Wightman — BBC Panorama

• Undercover School: Cruelty in the Classroom

Job Rabkin, Darshna Soni, Ed Gove, Saif Aledros, Georgina Lee, Lee Sorrell — Channel 4 News

• Undercover Inside Reform’s Campaign

Holly Bancroft, May Bulman, Monica C. Camacho, Fahim Abed — The Independent and Lighthouse Reports

• At last! Afghan special forces heroes set for sanctuary in UK after government U-turn
• MoD accused of burying admission that UK special forces had power over Afghan sanctuary claims
• Murdered, tortured or in hiding from the Taliban: The special forces abandoned by Britain

Daniel Hewitt, Imogen Barrer, Isabel Alderson-Blench, John Ray — ITV News: The Post Office Tapes

• New secret tape reveals top Post Office lawyer was warned of ‘wrongful’ convictions decade ago
• Secret tape shows Paula Vennells was told about problems with Horizon and warned not to cover it up
• Paula Vennells’ ‘smoking gun’ email reveals Post Office ‘cover-up’

Rowena Mason, Henry Dyer, Matthew Weaver — The Guardian

• Biggest Tory donor said looking at Diane Abbott makes you ‘want to hate all black women’
• No yawning or fingerprints on doors: the strict rules at Tory donor’s firm
• Revealed: Sunak flown to Leeds for private tour of Frank Hester’s office weeks after £5m donation

Samantha Poling, Eamon T. O Connor, Anton Ferrie, Shelley Jofre — BBC Disclosure

• Catching a Killer: The Murder of Emma Caldwell

Scoop of the Year

Russell Brand accused of rape, sexual assaults and abuse — The Sunday Times, The Times, Hardcash Productions and Channel 4 Dispatches

Huw Edwards Huw Edwards charged with making 37 indecent images of children, ‘shared on WhatsApp’ — The Sun

Naked photos sent in WhatsApp ‘phishing’ attacks on UK MPs and staff— Politico

No 10 pass for Labour donor who gave £500,000 — The Sunday Times

Labour will add 20% VAT to private school fees within first year of winning power — i

The Nottingham Attacks: A Search for Answers — BBC Panorama

Innovation

Harry Lewis-Irlam, Stephen Matthews, Darren Boyle, Rhodri Morgan — Mail Online: Deep Dive

• Anatomy of a loveless landslide: How Labour won on apathy and division
• Hour by hour, how D-Day unfolded…
• How China could seize Taiwan and spark WW3

Laura Dunn, Katie Lilley-Harris, Ellie Senior, Sherree Younger, Scott Nicholson, Jamie Mckerrow Maxwell — KL Magazine

• Rocky Bottoms
• Johnny Cave’s Asparagus
• Archangel Distilleries

Niels de Hoog, Antonio Voce, Elena Morresi, Manisha Ganguly, Ashley Kirk — The Guardian

• How war destroyed Gaza’s neighbourhoods – visual investigation

Alison Killing, Chris Miller, Peter Andringa, Chris Campbell, Sam Learner, Sam Joiner — Financial Times

• FT investigation finds Ukrainian children on Russian adoption sites

David Dubas-Fisher, Cullen Willis, Paul Gallagher, Richard Ault — Reach Data Unit

• DWP Cold Weather Payment postcode checker – map shows where households are due £25, £50 or £75 boost
• Enter postcodes in this map to see average house prices in your area
• Cheapest places in Greater Manchester to buy petrol as RAC issues fuel price warning

Gabriel Pogrund, Emanuele Midolo, Venetia Menzies, Darren Burchett, Narottam Medhora, Cecilia Tombesi — The Sunday Times

• The dead teenager, the lying suspect and the black box that proves it

The post British Journalism Awards 2024: Full list of this year’s finalists appeared first on Press Gazette.

The BBC plans to make a net reduction of 130 roles in its news and current affairs department, ending interview programme Hardtalk, tech show Click and the Asian Network’s bespoke news service as part of a £24m cost-cutting drive.

The closures are part of a broader BBC plan to cut 500 jobs across the corporation by March 2026 in order to create a total of £700m in annual savings relative to 2022.

The proposals would see 185 roles closed in total in BBC news and current affairs teams, with 55 new roles opened.

A further 25 post closures are proposed in the media operations team which supports the production of the BBC’s news, radio and some sport services.

BBC News chief executive Deborah Turness told staff of the changes in an email on Tuesday, saying the corporation proposed savings equivalent to 4% of the current budget.

“We have worked hard to find savings that don’t require us to close roles,” she said. “In fact, more than 40% of these savings will come from non-staff measures including reductions to spend on contracts, suppliers, distribution and physical buildings.

“But with staff costs accounting for 75% of our overall budget, I’m sorry to say that post closures are unavoidable.”

Hardtalk currently airs nightly Monday to Thursday on the BBC News Channel and has a podcast. It had been described as the “flagship” current affairs interview programme for BBC World News (one of the two previous TV channels that merged into the current BBC News Channel last year).

Turness wrote that Hardtalk will be closed “as we focus on continuous live and breaking output on our News Channel, and do more to use and promote the high impact interviews and important conversations that are happening every day across our platforms”.

Hardtalk presenter Stephen Sackur posted on X that the closure was “depressing news for the BBC”.

“A brilliant team of producers and researchers is being disbanded just as BBC DG Tim Davie is trying to persuade the British Government that the journalism of the BBC World Service is such a vital expression of democratic soft power that the taxpayer must fund it. Whatever the outcome o f that, it seems it will be too late to save Hardtalk – for so long a pillar of the World Service schedule.”

BBC Click is described as “the BBC’s flagship technology programme” and airs on the BBC News Channel (formerly BBC World News).

Co-presenter Lara Lewington said on X: “The BBC gave us an amazing opportunity to cover the tech that has, and will transform our lives, in ways we could never have imagined. It is a shame to see our dear show come to an end at this moment of AI transformation and incredible acceleration in innovation and possibility, but such are the economic constraints.”

The BBC says that Click is being “relaunched and renamed” to Tech Now rather than closed fully, “shifting from its traditional TV format to one where the films work best for digital”.

Also under the proposals, domestic BBC radio stations would begin airing World Service summaries between midnight and 5.30am rather than their own domestic summaries and the 5.30am News Briefing on Radio 4 would cease.

The cuts announced on Tuesday do not impact the World Service, which Turness said was because “we are in discussion with the government about its current funding levels.

“When those discussions are concluded we will be able to shape plans for the future and share them.”

Director-general Tim Davie has this week been vocal about the effect funding cuts are having on the World Service, saying they are opening the way to the growth of state news outlets from the likes of Russia and China: “Perhaps most worrying from the BBC point of view is that we can now see clear evidence of the fact that, when the World Service retreats, state-funded media operators move in to take advantage.”

Details of closures and changes at BBC News

The Asian Network’s news service includes programmes such as The Ankur Desai show, 60 Minutes and Asian Network News Presents, all of which will be closed along with 18 associated posts. The station will instead begin airing Newsbeat bulletins which are also used on Radio 1 and 1Xtra.

BBC 5 Live will no longer produce its own overnight news programme, which will instead be handled by the BBC’s nations and local teams, resulting in the closure of eight posts.

The proposals also include the merging of four “On The Day” newsdesk divisions, Home, Foreign, Content and Live, to create “a single, story-led structure”.

Turness wrote the goal of the change was to “manage demand, reduce duplication and prioritise live, digital and high impact journalism”.

Davie has previously instructed BBC News to reduce overall output by 20%.

The BBC said it will increase the number of digital roles in time zones outside the UK, “closing some roles in London and opening new positions in Sydney” as part of a “follow the sun” digital strategy that will allow it to better operate around the clock.

Turness told staff: “We are doing everything we can do avoid compulsory redundancies. Earlier in the summer we launched a Voluntary Redundancy (VR) scheme. Many of the roles proposed for closure in News align with expressions of interest in VR, and there are also expressions of interest in other roles where there might be opportunities for redeployment. Anyone potentially impacted by today’s announcements will be able to register for VR on the same terms.”

The cuts were first indicated in July as part of the BBC’s annual report for the year to the end of March 2024 which attributed the budget squeeze in large part to a freeze on the licence fee that meant it is now £1bn worse off a year than it was in 2010/11.

NUJ decries new BBC cuts as ‘an assault on journalism’

Last month the BBC has announced plans to cut up to 115 editorial and production jobs in the nations and regions, which themselves followed cuts to BBC local radio and output such as Newsnight.

Outgoing NUJ general secretary Michelle Stanistreet said the new cuts “represent a damaging assault on journalism and news at a time when the UK needs greater plurality and diversity of news and trust in journalism is under attack at home and abroad.

“Some of these decisions represent comparatively modest savings yet will disproportionately undermine the breadth and range of news content the BBC currently provides.”

Laura Davison, the union’s broadcasting organiser and incoming secretary general, added: “It is unclear how much journalism at the BBC can withstand without decisive action and investment that recognises the immense benefit of independent, credible news and current affairs programming. The inevitable loss of talent will serve as a double whammy to the organisation, where under-resourced teams must now strive to ensure the sustainability of journalism valued by the public.

“As we unpack detail of proposals, we will bring together NUJ reps to consider next steps alongside the scale and impact of these damaging plans.”

The post BBC News to close Hardtalk, Click and Asian Network news service in latest round of 185 job cuts appeared first on Press Gazette.

Upmarket UK newsbrands are far less likely to link through to the work of their colleagues at other publishers than tabloid news sites, new Press Gazette research suggests.

Press Gazette assessed recent output from nine leading UK news websites to establish how often they include a hyperlink when repeating information sourced from other publishers.

In the snapshot survey we found that the Mirror and The Sun were the most likely to link to other publishers, doing so in eight out of ten stories assessed at each site.

The Times, Financial Times and Telegraph, on the other hand, each only linked to another news site in one of the ten articles analysed at each and appear to have taken editorial policy decision not to link.

The Guardian and BBC, meanwhile, appeared to link through to their sources slightly less often than not.

Mail Online linked to publisher sources in the majority of articles and the Express in half of the examples we found.

The overall picture is of an industry that routinely avoids linking to sources when lifting information from other sites.

Press Gazette searched each publisher for articles published in recent weeks that featured the word “reported” (i.e. “The New York Times reported…”) and selected from the results the first ten stories that carried information copied from a named third-party news outlet.

Because the research only looked at articles that disclosed they were citing another news outlet, this research does not account for the overall frequency with which the publishers credit their sources: uncredited rewrites of a competitor’s story, for example, would not be picked up in the analysis.

Across all the publishers assessed internal links to other parts of their own websites were common. Many of the publishers would also credit information to "local media" when describing something that had been reported overseas, without identifying or linking to the source.

The Mirror told Press Gazette that it is supportive of linking and that the two articles in which no external link had been inserted were the result of human error.

A spokesperson for The Sun, similarly, said: "The Sun has always been known for breaking great exclusives and we have long campaigned for publishers to receive recognition for their original journalism.

“Alongside expecting to receive this attribution we in turn make every attempt to ensure that we attribute other publications' good stories that we have picked up."

The BBC’s operating licence requires the corporation to link to relevant third parties in its online output, and in its most recent “Delivering our Mission and Public Purposes" report it said that, in a sample of 1,370 articles published across the BBC News and BBC Sport websites, 18% of its output had linked to another media organisation. The BBC declined to comment.

Mail Online declined to comment. The Guardian also declined to comment, but pointed Press Gazette to its editorial code, which instructs its journalists that material "obtained from another organisation should be acknowledged".

The Times, FT and Telegraph had not responded to a request for comment at time of publication.

What's best practice on linking to other news sites?

Gavin Allen, a digital journalism lecturer at Cardiff University’s School of Journalism and a former associate editor at Mirror.co.uk, said there can be a “double incentive” for news sites not to link to competitors: “On the one hand, you're saying ‘we didn't break the story, someone else did’ which may be bad for reputation.

“On the other hand, you're pointing readers away from your website,” which he said may lead them to click away.

Materially, Allen said traffic from backlinks is often “vanishingly small”. Instead, he said, the way un-linked re-reports “might start to cannibalise your traffic is if it’s attracting search away”.

He said: “It’s more a courtesy and an ethics thing as well, I think… If you’re doing stuff based on other people’s work then you should be crediting that work. That would be good practice.”

Search engine optimisation orthodoxy holds that Google gives better rankings to articles that link to relevant third-party websites.

The Association of Online Publishers offers the following guidance on this topic: "Fair attribution is vital to help publishers get credit for the time, money, and effort they put into sourcing, investigating, and producing original content.

"As well as helping direct users to the original source of a story, linking is vitally important for SEO. Google uses links from ‘prominent websites’ as a signal to determine ‘authoritativeness’ – a key factor in determining ranking."

The AOP invites publishers to sign up to the Link Attribution Protocol, a group of publishers who agree to follow best practice on linking and who share a single email point of contact for getting links added to stories.

Scroll down for the full linking results from each of the nine publishers

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Double the number of men are being quoted as experts compared to women on the UK’s biggest broadcast news programmes, according to a new survey into gender inequality.

However, ten years ago there were four times as many male experts on air compared to women.

Across BBC News at Ten, BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, ITV News at Ten, Sky News Breakfast, Channel 4 News and Channel 5 News between November and April, there was on average 1.97 men for every one woman expert featured.

This is an improvement from the start of 2014 when there were 4.1 male experts for every one woman featured.

The new figures have been published by City St Georges (part of the University if London) following the latest study led by Professor Emerita Lis Howell, director of the Expert Women Project, and Professor Suzanne Franks, Professor of Journalism.

Howell told Press Gazette the increase in women experts may be attributed in part to an increase in equality in other professional areas as well as increased efforts being undertaken by the broadcast programmes.

Some of the broadcasters also produce their own internal data on diversity in their output – for example the BBC’s 50:50 Project.

The programmes included were chosen because they were described as “flagship” shows when the research began ten years ago.

Researchers monitored each programme every weekday for one week in every month between November and April in this latest period.

Anyone interviewed because of their knowledge, influence or authority – including politicians, CEOs, academics and celebrities – were classed as “experts” for the research.

Howell acknowledged that the presence of men or women can depend on the stories in the news agenda and the gender diversity of senior politicians, for example, but suggested it should ultimately balance out.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, for example, one month featured an “outstandingly high number of women experts” including NHS workers and care home managers, resulting in the highest recorded ratio of women experts on air in March 2021 (1.6 men for one woman). But Howell said the next month was disproportionately dominated by male politicians.

Referring to the war in Israel and Gaza which began just before the latest research period, Howell added: “We’re in a war situation now. Perhaps that’s the reason why it’s slightly stalled, because… we’ve got wonderful women war reporters, but the experts that they interview tend to be men because war is promulgated by men largely.”

The most equal ratio was at Channel 5 News where 1.5 male experts were featured for every one female. The 5 News gender split in terms of the on-air time for presenters was skewed by the fact that the show has one main presenter, Dan Walker, who is a man.

On the other end of the table, BBC News at Ten had more women presenters on screen than men (a 0.6 to one male to female ratio). The study took place while former BBC lead anchor Huw Edwards was suspended and off-air.

On average across the programmes surveyed there were 1.36 men to every one woman correspondent or reporter.

Howell said she is "disappointed personally" that there were not more women reporters but acknowledged there are "far more women in newsrooms than there was before".

"It should be one to one, and 1.36 doesn't sound as if it's a lot out, but it is out."

In 2014, excluding Channel 5, there were an average of 3.02 men to every one woman reporter/correspondent.

Howell added: "I do think there's a tendency to think that men go and get their hands dirty and do the hunting and gathering and women sit in the studio with their hair done, and that's unfair on both sides. We need to see more women on the road, especially see more women do broadcast journalism courses and things like that."

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The BBC’s on-air journalists were collectively paid at least £685,000 to attend 465 outside engagements between the start of July 2023 and the end of June 2024, the corporation’s external events register shows.

The register, which is published quarterly, keeps track of which BBC journalists have taken on gigs as moderators, panellists, awards judges and speakers, as well as who has paid them.

It also provides limited information about how much those journalists were paid, making it possible to calculate ranges of pay they may have received.

Which BBC journalist earned the most from outside engagements?

The register describes the sums paid as either “Below £1k”, “£1k – £5k”, “£5k – £10k” or “Over £10k”. For a short period of the past year the register gave greater detail, with pay categories for “Below £250” and “£250 – £1k”.

Based on those minimum figures, the BBC journalist who likely received the most income from outside engagements over the past year was presenter Clive Myrie, who earned at least £66,000 from 11 events.

Over the year Myrie took on three gigs that paid “Over £10k”, making it impossible to calculate an upper limit on his earnings. These three top-paid engagements were funded by the Black Police Officers Association, the British Insurance Brokers Association and financial services company Legal & General. In the latter two cases he is listed as having been an event host. The register does not always reveal the roles the journalists carried out at events.

Myrie took on a further seven events that paid between £5,000 and £10,000 (inclusive) which supplemented his £310,000+ BBC salary.

Myrie is one of eight BBC on-air journalists to have received more than £10,000 for an outside engagement. The others are Amol Rajan, Fiona Bruce, Jeremy Bowen, Katya Adler, Nick Robinson, Ros Atkins and Zoe Kleinman.

Robinson and Rajan, both Today programme presenters, tied for the most £10,000+ jobs, each doing four over the year. Myrie did the second most, followed by Europe editor Adler and Question Time host Bruce, who did two £10,000+ events each. Adler holds the distinction of being the only journalist on the list to have not taken any gigs worth less than £10,000 during the year.

Far more journalists received sums worth £1,000 or less, however: BBC on-air staff took on 225 such events over the year, including at least 14 that were worth £250 or less. Another 155 engagements paid between £1,000 and £5,000 and a further 67 paid from £5,000 to £10,000.

Across all the journalists who took on outside engagements, the median (typical) per-person remuneration for the whole year falls within the £1,000 to £5,000 band. The median number of engagements taken on was two, with 65 of the 156 journalists taking on one gig.

The most prolific journalist for outside events was Ireland correspondent Mark Simpson, who took on 21 external engagements and earned a minimum of £3,000 (as well as a notional maximum of £28,000).

He was followed by Newswatch presenter Samira Ahmed, who carried out 19 outside engagements paying her a total that falls in the range of between £42,500 and £110,000 – the highest minimum earnings of any journalist on this list who did not do any events worth more than £10,000.

In all, 17 BBC on-air journalists received at least £10,000 across the year for outside engagements.

The sponsors, organisers and funders who paid for the event appearances vary significantly. Some were publicly-listed corporations: investment bank JP Morgan, for example, paid security correspondent Frank Gardner between £5,000 and £10,000 to speak in March, and accounting company Ernst & Young and bank BNP Paribas each paid Nick Robinson more than £10,000 in November for unspecified roles.

Other journalism organisations also appear frequently in the register. Campaign magazine, for example, paid Samira Ahmed between £5,000 and £10,000 in March to host an event, and paid BBC climate editor Justin Rowlatt between £1,000 and £5,000 for another engagement in an unspecified role.

Many of the appearances, particularly the lower-paid ones, were funded by universities, local bodies or industry associations. The Bradford and Rotherham Chamber of Commerce, for example, paid BBC Look North presenter Amy Garcia below £1,000 for an appearance in November, and Belfast Pride gave journalist and weather presenter Barra Best £1,000 for a hosting gig in July 2023.

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Former BBC News presenter Huw Edwards has been sentenced to six months’ imprisonment suspended for two years after admitting accessing indecent images of children.

He will also be subject to 25 rehabilitation sessions and be placed on the sex offender treatment programme for 40 days.

In July Edwards admitted three charges of “making” indecent photographs after he was sent 41 illegal images by convicted paedophile Alex Williams over Whatsapp.

Westminster Magistrates’ Court heard on Monday that the 63-year-old was “truly sorry” for how he has “damaged his family and his loved ones”, and for committing the offences.

The court also heard Edwards had told Williams to “go on” when asked if he wanted “naughty pics and vids” of somebody described as young.

He sent hundreds of pounds after Williams asked for a “Christmas gift after all the hot videos”, the court was told.

Prosecutor Ian Hope said: “Alex Williams says he wants some Air Force 1 trainers that cost around £100, and Mr Edwards offers to send him £200.”

Defence barrister Philip Evans KC said Edwards did not make payments in order to receive indecent images of children, telling the court: “Mr Edwards did not make payments in order for images to be sent to him, and he certainly did not make payments in order that indecent images would be sent to him.”

Edwards wrote “yes xxx” when he was asked by Williams if he wanted sexual images of a person whose “age could be discerned as being between 14 and 16”, the court heard.

The judge sentencing Edwards said his “long-earned reputation is in tatters”.

Chief Magistrate, district judge Paul Goldspring, said: “Perhaps it does not need saying but you are of previous good character.”

The judge said he accepts Edwards had been of “exemplary” good character “having enjoyed a very successful career in the media”.

“It’s obvious that until now you were very highly regarded by the public,” he continued, adding that Edwards was “perhaps the most recognised newsreader-journalist”.

“It is not an exaggeration to say your long-earned reputation is in tatters,” the judge said.

Going through the mitigating factors in the case, Goldspring said he believed the former broadcaster’s remorse was genuine and that his mental health at the time of the offences could have impaired his decision-making.

But the judge added that the financial and reputational damage Edwards suffered was “the natural consequence of your behaviour which you brought upon yourself”.

He continued: “I am of the clear view that you do not present a risk or danger to the public at large, specifically to children.

“There is a realistic prospect of rehabilitation.”

The judge declined to make a sexual harm prevention order against Edwards.

Evans, defending, said Edwards “did not gain any gratification” from indecent images.

Huw Edwards said ‘go on’ to ‘naughty pics and vids’

Opening the case against the veteran broadcaster, Hope, prosecuting, said: “It is clear from the face of the Whatsapp chat recovered that a deal of the chat between Alex Williams and Mr Edwards was sexual in nature.

“It is also clear that Mr Edwards was paying not insignificant sums of money – low hundreds of pounds on an occasional basis – to Alex Williams which Mr Williams directly asked for on several occasions, as gifts or presents, apparently off the back of sending pornographic images to Mr Edwards, about which images they chatted.

“Alex Williams has stated that the money was more generally to support him at university and amounted to around £1,000 to £1,500.”

Hope continued: “From that chat in December 2020, Alex Williams said that he had ‘a file of vids and pics for you of someone special’.

“Mr Edwards immediately queried who the subject was and was then sent three images of seemingly the same person, from two of which images the subject’s age could be discerned as being between 14 and 16.

“These two were category C indecent images of children in which the child was exposing his penis.

“Alex Williams stated that he had ‘12 videos and 42 pics I’ve sent you a video of him before’.

“Shortly after Alex Williams asked: ‘want me to send you the full file?’ Mr Edwards responded ‘Yes xxx…’ immediately following which Alex Williams sent to Mr Edwards around 30 attachments, about half of which were category C indecent images of children.”

Hope said Edwards did not respond after convicted paedophile Williams sent him a sexual video of children aged around seven to nine and 11 to 13.

The prosecutor said: “On February 10 2021, a category A video was sent which is notable because the age of one of the children involved was significantly younger than in the rest of the images sent – it showed several acts of penetration between two children aged around seven to nine and 11 to 13 respectively.

“There was no direct response from Mr Edwards to this video, beyond it being marked as ‘read’.

“A week later… a number of attachments were sent which included two category B videos and four category C still images comprising indecent images of children.

“On February 19 2021, Alex Williams asked: ‘is the stuff I’m sending too young for you?’

“The next response from Mr Edwards is dated February 22 2021 saying: ‘don’t send underage’.”

Hope continued: “In a later exchange on August 11, 2021, Alex Williams says he has some ‘naughty pics and vids unsure if you’d like’. Mr Edwards tells him to ‘go on’ and Alex Williams states ‘yng [sic]’.

“Mr Edwards again tells him to ‘go on’ and Alex Williams sends a Category A moving image showing a male child aged around 7 to 9…”

“Mr Edwards inquires where the video is from and Alex Williams says an image sharing group on another social media platform which they have both also used, Telegram.

“Alex Williams says the subject is ‘quite yng looking’ to which Mr Edwards responds it ‘can be deceptive’ and asks if he has ‘any more?’

“Alex Williams says he has but he is not sure if Mr Edwards would like them as they are illegal.

“Mr Edwards says: ‘Ah ok don’t’ and the exchange immediately following concerns a series of images which Alex Williams describes as ‘looks young don’t he but he’s deffo 19′.”

The relevant images in Edwards’ case range from the most serious category, known as category A, to the least serious, known as category C.

They include seven category A images, 12 category B images and 22 category C images.

Of the most serious images received by Edwards, the estimated age of most of the children was between 13 and 15, but one was aged between seven and nine.

The Sentencing Council, a public body sponsored by the Ministry of Justice, defines category A images as those involving penetrative sexual activity, sexual activity with an animal, or sadism.

Category B images are those involving non-penetrative sexual activity, while category C images are indecent images that do not fall into A or B.

According to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), “making” an indecent image has been broadly interpreted by the courts.

It can range from opening an attachment to an email containing an image, to accessing pornographic websites in which indecent photographs of children appear by way of an automatic “pop-up” mechanism.

BBC in attempt to recoup pay Huw Edwards received after his arrest

Williams was charged in relation to his Whatsapp chat with Edwards and was convicted of seven offences following an investigation by South Wales Police, receiving a 12-month suspended sentence.

The final indecent image was sent in August 2021, a category A film featuring a young boy, with convicted paedophile Williams telling the newsreader the child was “quite young looking” and that he had more images which were illegal.

Overall the charges cover a period between December 2020 and August 2021.

Edwards was arrested in November but continued to receive a BBC salary until his resignation on medical advice in April. The BBC is trying to retrieve an estimated £200,000 paid during that time.

A BBC spokesperson said after Edwards was sentenced: “We are appalled by his crimes. He has betrayed not just the BBC, but audiences who put their trust in him.”

Edwards was charged in June but the fact of his arrest and charge was not made public until late July, days before his first court appearance.

He has been convicted on charges that are completely separate to allegations published by The Sun last year, which prompted his initial suspension from the BBC, that he had paid a young person for sexual images.

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BBC chairman Samir Shah has admitted that disgraced former newsreader Huw Edwards “damaged” the reputation of the corporation.

Director-general Tim Davie and Shah were questioned before the House of Lords’ Communications and Digital Committee on their future strategy, as well as the broadcaster’s funding model amid a decline in licence fee payers.

Davie also gave an update on recovering an estimated £200,000 in pay from Edwards.

When asked about the situation, Shah told the committee: “There’s nothing more important than public trust in the BBC, and we are custodians of that trust and what Huw Edwards did damage the reputation and the trust for the BBC so we take that very seriously indeed.

“I should say, it was a shock to discover, when it was announced, when he was charged, that he had led this double life. On the face of it, a trusted news presenter, but hidden, secretly, he was this figure who did the most appalling things. I mean, let’s never forget the victims.”

He added that he “knew him”, having overseen current affairs at the BBC decades ago, and other staff who worked with him “feel angry and betrayed” by Edwards.

Shah added: “I asked him, as Tim, to give me an account of the decisions they took in the course of that year. We then reviewed those decisions, and we believe, as Tim has said, and we said in our statement that the decisions Tim and his team took were made in good faith.

“These were very complicated decisions, and given the evidence available to them at the time, they made reasonable decisions based on the evidence. So we supported it, and we continue to support it.”

The BBC admitted it was informed that the former TV presenter had been arrested in November but continued to employ him for around five months until he left on medical advice.

He continued to be paid a salary during this period, which the BBC has been attempting to get back following his conviction for making indecent images of children.

Davie said: “We’ve made the formal request, and I can’t go into too much detail, but discussions are under way, but I’ve got no further news, apart from the BBC’s position is clear, the money should be returned, and we made the request.”

When asked if he set a deadline, he said: “I don’t believe we set a deadline… but we do expect to make progress and get an answer.”

Davie also said the BBC will “explore” the legal process if Edwards refuses.

Edwards, 63, pleaded guilty in July to charges of having indecent images of children, with seven of the 41 being of the most serious type, after he resigned from the corporation in April.

Davie also suggested that the BBC could take steps such as dismissal before charge sooner if this happened again.

He said it “was really difficult getting the balance right, because you knew that the arrest had been made”.

Davie said: “Obviously your primary thoughts are people who are impacted, but also you’ve got people who are accused at that point, and you don’t know whether… they’re going to result in charges. So you have a lot of unknowns at that point.”

He also said: “This affair has not been easy for any of us at the BBC, and particularly for those people who’ve been impacted, but I think it’s actually right to look back and reflect and say, what are the learnings here? This is standard practice, but maybe we should be challenging that.”

The broadcaster’s executive previously released a statement on Edwards saying it will “look at lessons from this period, including the BBC’s approach to the rules surrounding payments when employees are suspended”.

During his four decades at the corporation, Edwards announced the late Queen’s death on the BBC in September 2022 and was among the teams leading coverage of historic events including the Queen’s funeral and the coronation of the King in May 2023.

Tim Davie says BBC licence fee flatlining will mean ‘erosion’ of output

During the same hearing, Davie said the recent flatlining of the BBC licence fee spells “erosion” for some of the broadcaster’s output.

He said: “The BBC will be flat in revenue terms, license fee income this year. So we’re not in freefall, but we’ve got some erosion, you’re going to get that with this level of competition.”

Davie added that the BBC had been “disinvested in” by previous Governments.

He said: “The BBC has had a billion pounds taken out of it over the last decade, plus. We haven’t kept flat, we haven’t kept flat funding. We’ve taken out a billion pounds, and we still remain at about £3.7bn” in funding.

Davie also said that without clarity on what the Media Bill means by having public service broadcasters getting appropriate prominence on digital platforms than other British channels will be in “jeopardy” along with the BBC.

“We are doing extremely well in digital,” he added. “We’ve had a fantastic summer for iPlayer. But there’s a lot of risk.”

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The BBC is planning to cut up to 115 editorial and production jobs in the Nations and Regions.

Staff have been told about 40 to 45 jobs are expected to be cut at BBC Local in England by next year.

About 25 to 30 job closures are expected in Wales, the same number in Scotland, and ten to 12 in Northern Ireland.

A note to staff in BBC Wales, BBC Scotland and BBC Northern Ireland, seen by Press Gazette, promised that management would aim to “deliver the savings without closing any major services”, make “smart, targeted savings – focusing our resources on the areas that deliver maximum value for audiences”, “maintain our online growth across News, iPlayer, Sport and Sounds ” and “avoid disrupting those areas that saw the biggest changes last time round”.

News teams across England have already seen “devastating” cuts, the NUJ said, with 450 jobs lost across TV, radio and online in 2020 and then greater programme sharing being introduced across many local radio stations. Some jobs have also been created, including 130 journalism roles in local news last year.

The BBC is aiming to fulfil the job cut target through voluntary redundancies and a four-week window for volunteers has now opened.

A BBC spokesperson said: “We have been clear that the significant funding pressures we face means that every division in the BBC needs to make savings. In July we said that we expected to see an overall reduction of around 500 BBC public service roles by March 2026.

“BBC Nations announced today that it expects to close up to 115 posts in editorial and production teams by next year as part of these plans. This represents around 3% of the division’s staffing. A number of further redundancies are anticipated in the division’s operations departments, but these will be shared directly with the teams affected first.

“While challenging, we aim to make these savings – as far as is possible – through voluntary redundancy and we can confirm that we expect to deliver the changes without closing any major services. In addition, there will no programme changes or savings impacting on BBC Local Radio output.”

NUJ general secretary Michelle Stanistreet said: “Coming on the back of a painful cull across BBC Local, these latest cuts across its regions and nations will further hollow out local news provision at a time when resources are stretched to breaking point.”

BBC director-general Tim Davie said in July that the broadcaster intended to cut a net 500 jobs by March 2026 and launched an initial voluntary redundancy scheme at that point.

The BBC’s target for annual savings is currently £500m but Davie said earlier this year this needed to rise, meaning an extra £200m in savings per year is needed.

As of 31 March the BBC’s public service headcount had dropped by 8.5% since 2018/19 to 19,231. Outside of local news cuts in recent years have affected areas like Newsnight, BBC World Service and the BBC News and BBC World News channels when they merged, although jobs have also been created largely in digital areas.

NUJ senior organiser Laura Davison said: “These cuts have come about because of the repeated failure of previous governments to properly fund the UK’s public service broadcaster. Licence fee freezes, making the corporation fund free licences for the over-75s, and subsequent small increases have left the BBC in a perilous state.

“The BBC boasts that it has moved some of its programmes and news departments outside London, in a project ambitiously called ‘Across The UK’. But what we see today is a potential significant further reduction in roles that truly serve our Nations and Regions.

“We are further concerned that colleagues who are left behind will have to pick up the workload done by those who are leaving. Again, we have already seen the consequences of this in England, with many local radio stations now having afternoon news bulletins pre-recorded by neighbouring stations or sharing output across large regions with no shared identity. Further savings will inevitably have an impact on output in the devolved nations.”

Davison continued: “As ever, we will work to avoid compulsory redundancies, maximise redeployment opportunities and ensure there is a proper assessment of workloads and stress. We welcome the BBC’s recognition that recent job cuts have been really grim for all staff involved.

“We call on the Secretary of State, Lisa Nandy, to give a firm commitment to urgently and properly funding the BBC. In particular, we ask that she places valued local and regional output at the heart of the current charter renewal negotiations and ensures that Ofcom hold the BBC to its commitments in the Nations and Regions beyond 2027.”

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