The ‘rich list’ of BBC journalists and presenters has been released and it makes for grim reading: eyewatering sums extracted under threat of criminal sanction from the nation’s TV viewers and handed over to the corporation’s overrated ‘stars’. The Press Gazette has more.
Forty-six BBC journalists earned above £178,000 last year from their work for the corporation, according to the BBC’s annual report for 2023/24 – three more than the year before.
BBC News at Six and Ten presenter Huw Edwards remains at the top of the ranking despite being off-air from July 2023 and for most of the financial year covered by the report.
In total some 54 BBC news staff are paid more than £178,000 (which is the cut-off for the BBC on disclosing top earners). By comparison, Prime Minister Keir Starmer is paid just over £167,000 a year.
Edwards’s salary was somewhere between £475,000 to £479,999 for the year to March 31st 2024. That was a 6% rise from £435,000 to £439,999 in 2022/23.
Edwards left screens after the Sun reported a BBC presenter was alleged to have paid a young person for explicit images. He was identified by his wife Vicky Flint who said he had been hospitalised due to a serious mental health episode.
Edwards formally resigned in April this year on medical advice. He did not receive a payoff but did receive full pay while he was off-air, which the BBC said was “normal policy” for staff while suspended.
Asked during a press briefing about the annual report on Tuesday how the salary paid to Edwards even though he was only on air for three months of the financial year was good value to licence fee payers, BBC Director General Tim Davie said: “We’re always trying to be very judicious with the spending of public money and no one wants to waste a pound but what you’re trying to do, and from the onset of that affair, was trying to act proportionately, fairly and navigate this appropriately. I think that’s what we did.”
Other than Edwards, two presenters earned more than £400,000: Question Time presenter Fiona Bruce and BBC Radio Ulster and BBC One (NI) presenter Stephen Nolan both took home between £405,000 and £409,999.
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Worth reading in full.
The Telegraph‘s list (and the Mail’s) includes presenters such as Gary Lineker (£1.35m) and Zoe Ball (£0.95m) paid even more eyewatering sums for their service – despite, in Zoe’s case, seeing audiences fall by over half a million.
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