The BBC has appointed Rachel Jupp as director of BBC News, filling a post that has been without a permanent holder for almost a year. She succeeds Deborah Turness, who announced last November that she would step down after the row over how Panorama edited a speech by President Trump.
Jupp joined Channel 4 News in 2005 and became its head of home news before moving to the BBC in 2013 as deputy editor of Newsnight. She edited Panorama from 2016 for four years, leaving several years before the Trump episode was broadcast. She has since worked as editorial executive for BBC Content and, more recently, has led the corporation’s editorial work on generative AI from the US. Director-general Matt Brittin called her “an outstanding editorial leader” and praised her news judgement, fairness and high standards.
She will be paid £400,000 a year, oversee about 4,500 staff and sit on the BBC’s executive committee. Turness started on a similar salary in 2022, but by her final year it had risen to between £445,000 and £449,999. Jonathan Munro, who has been interim head of news for the past 11 months, will go back to his job as deputy director when Jupp starts. Jupp said she wanted to champion independent and impartial journalism and deepen the public’s trust in the BBC.
She takes charge during a period of heavy cuts. Around 550 job closures in news have been announced so far, with more expected, and the BBC as a whole plans to cut between 1,800 and 2,000 posts, almost one in 10, to save £500m over two years. Brittin said audiences were fragmenting and trust was scarce, and that BBC News had to change how it serves them. The BBC’s culture and media editor, Katie Razzall, said the choice of someone with AI experience raised questions about how the technology could reshape the newsroom.
The Panorama episode spliced together two sections of a speech Trump gave in 2021, shortly before the Capitol riot on 6 January. The problem came to light in an internal memo leaked to the Telegraph, and then director-general Tim Davie also resigned; Brittin replaced him earlier this year. Trump has filed a $10bn (£7.6bn) lawsuit against the BBC, which apologised for the edit but rejected his demand for compensation. The case is scheduled to go to trial in the US in 2027.
