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Monday, October 5, 2026

Rachel Jupp is a bold choice for BBC News chief, says Katie Razzall

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Rachel Jupp is a bold choice for the BBC's director of news. She is a well-regarded high flier who has impressed in her roles at Panorama, Newsnight and Channel 4 News.

She is currently the BBC's director of news documentaries and long form journalism. But she hasn't been in that role for long and hasn't spent years leading huge teams of people (BBC News' global newsroom has around 4,500 staff).

A lack of that kind of experience might have been problematic in the past. But the BBC's new director general comes from Google. Tech companies regularly appoint people who may not have the direct experience for a role but have the strategic vision and drive to make a difference. He is talking about distinctive journalism and reinvention.

Jupp's appointment signals a direction of travel both on the change that the new boss thinks is required and also on the use of technology.

Before Jupp took up her role in documentaries, she had moved to the US and was a senior member of the BBC's AI team, developing and leading the BBC's approach to artificial intelligence.

It feels significant that the former Google boss has chosen someone with that experience to run his news teams, raising questions around how AI could open up the next frontier of a modern newsroom.

But the new director of news has a lot on her plate.

She leads a news operation that is still reeling from a series of crises that eventually brought down her predecessor, Deborah Turness, as well as director general Tim Davie.

She'll have to oversee the £51m in savings that news must make (one tenth of the £500m the entire BBC must find).

Job cuts are already in train, journalists are having to reapply for their roles - and there is much more pain to come.

Staff have told me they want clear direction and an end to the salami slicing of resources. They ask what are the priorities, what are the things we do that are crucial and which are less important?

The teams she now leads will want a plan for how they can make such deep cuts without impacting the quality of what they do.

BBC News stands or falls by its on-the-ground, eyewitness journalism. Some are asking how much of that can BBC News still afford to do.

But there are also questions about whether the BBC needs to learn from its rivals by slimming down the number of stories it does and prioritizing the big hits. A streamlined BBC News.

Her challenges are both editorial and practical.

After 10 months without a permanent boss, I have picked up a sense of drift. Everybody understands - and the new DG repeats this, just as his predecessor Tim Davie did - that the BBC must go to where audiences are and where they will be in the future.

Staff at BBC News have heard this before. They want to know what it actually means in practice and how news will be reorganised.

The biggest challenge is the change in viewing habits. News has a loyal base of viewers still watching on linear channels (and who many argue should not be taken for granted in the rush to attract younger audiences online) but the direction of travel is changing fast.

There will be resistance - from viewers, from politicians, from campaign groups - as the BBC decides to move away from old formats and old technology. But it must go where audiences are and the new head of news will need a strategy to move much more deeply into a digital world.

The BBC has been doing this in a fairly piecemeal way up to now.

But Jupp will need to turbocharge it - with fewer resources and a demoralised workforce, some of whom she will need to shepherd out the door.

Brittin has talked about the bigger prize of getting the news division's trusted journalism to much larger numbers of people around the world. She has to deliver that.

She will also need to give BBC News greater editorial confidence after years of political attack and the errors of recent years.

Staff working in news would argue it was the current affairs side of the operation that previously let the organisation down. A documentary about the children of Gaza narrated by the son of a Hamas official. A documentary about Israel's assault on Gazan medical staff commissioned and then dropped by the BBC and later shown on Channel 4.

Then, of course, there are the revelations that a Panorama broadcast ahead of Donald Trump's reelection as President had spliced together two clips of the President's speech on the day of the riots on Capitol Hill - changing the editorial meaning. BBC chair Samir Shah apologised to Trump who is suing the BBC for $10bn. The court proceedings are still playing out.

Perhaps promoting Jupp - who took over the BBC News' current affairs department after the scandals - to the top of News is a signal she will grip what some have viewed as a weak spot with rigour.

Trust is one of the BBC's core values. It's listed on the back of our work passes as "the foundation of the BBC". The new boss will need to make sure that the BBC remains the place of record. An organisation that is trusted.

It's still the most trusted source of news, but there are growing numbers of people on all sides of the political spectrum who don't feel the BBC speaks for them.

Many will argue that is because people live in echo chambers online, and don't want to hear other voices.

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