BBC Bosses Plan to Win Over Reform Voters’ Trust By Changing News and Drama Output

The Director-General and other executives have discussed altering ‘story selection’ to build a better rapport with supporters of Nigel Farage’s party. Adam Bienkov reports

The BBC Director-General Tim Davie and other senior bosses at the corporation have drawn up plans to win over voters of Reform UK, because of a belief that its news and drama output is creating “low trust issues” with supporters of Nigel Farage’s party.

Minutes of a meeting of the BBC’s Editorial Guidelines and Standards Committee in March – seen by Byline Times – show that BBC News’ CEO Deborah Turness gave a presentation in which she discussed plans to alter “story selection” and “other types of output, such as drama” in order to win the trust of Reform voters.

The committee – which includes former GB News executive and Director of Communications for Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May, Sir Robbie Gibb – also identified “the importance of local BBC teams” to win over supporters of Farage.

This is the Paywall

We pay our journalists to investigate stories that matter. So we make some of our best articles and investigations available exclusively to paying readers. This is one of those articles; to read it, sign in or subscribe.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Get access to the Byline Times Digital Edition and read this article now

It costs £3.95/month or £39.95/year
Find out more and compare ways to read Byline Times

Get access now