Strike leaves BBC without star reporters

Friday’s strike sees Robert Peston and Laura Kuenssberg missing from TV and radio news, as Newsnight goes off air The strike by BBC journalists on Friday leaves the corporation’s TV and radio services without star reporters including Nick Robinson, Robert Peston and Laura Kuenssberg on one of the biggest days so far in the phone-hacking story following the resignation of Rebekah Brooks. BBC2′s Newsnight, which has enjoyed a ratings boost in the past two weeks as viewers have tuned in to catch up with comment and analysis of the latest twists and turns in the phone-hacking saga, is also off air on Friday night because of the 24-hour strike by members of the National Union of Journalists. The current affairs show, which was to have been presented by Gavin Esler, is being replaced by a 2010 repeat of Have I Got News For You. However, BBC1′s main news bulletin at 1pm went out as normal and the 6pm and 10pm bulletins are due to go ahead as planned. Robinson, the BBC political editor, and Kuenssberg, the chief political correspondent about to join ITV News as business editor, have been regular fixtures on TV and radio bulletins and the BBC News channel as key elements in coverage of the News International scandal played out at Westminster. Peston has also delivered several scoops about the unfolding story, leading rival media organisations to accuse News International of leaking stories to the BBC journalist. Viewers and listeners tuning in to BBC News programmes on Friday morning found disruption to the breakfast shows on BBC1 and Radio 5 Live and Radio 4′s Today . BBC1′s Breakfast was off air, replaced by a BBC News channel simulcast, while the regular 5 Live Breakfast hosts Nicky Campbell and Rachel Burden were replaced by Ian Payne and Julia Bradbury. Listeners to Radio 4′s Today were treated to a repeated documentary about the Russian communist revolution in the runup to 7am. However, from 7am the BBC’s flagship radio news programme ran pretty much as normal with regular presenters Sarah Montague and Justin Webb, who is in Japan reporting on the aftermath of the tsunami that struck earlier this year. The World at One and PM, Radio 4′s flagship evening news programme at 5pm, are also off air. The 1pm World at One news programme was replaced by a 15-minute bulletin, with the rest of the hour-long show taken up by a repeat of an edition of The Prime Ministers on 19th-century statesman Robert Peel. In place of PM will be a repeated of the contemporary history show Document, about the Polaris missile, with an edition of Soul Music at 5.30pm. Radio 4′s 8pm political discussion show Any Questions has also been taken off air. Replacing the scheduled broadcast of the panel programme which usually hosted by Jonathan Dimbleby will be an omnibus edition of Radio 4′s series exploring Winston’s Churchill’s life outside politics, Churchill’s Other Lives. Saturday’s edition of the follow-up call-in programme Any Answers will be replaced by an edition of My Teenage Diary, according to the BBC. The late night Radio 4 news programme The World Tonight is giving way to an edition of Meeting Myself Coming Back just after the 10pm news bulletin. Radio 5 Live is running a slightly slimmed-down news service with short news bulletins on the hour and half hour, with 15-minute bulletins planned for 1pm, 5pm and 6pm. The BBC World Service’s English-language service will be running five-minute news at the top of the hour and two minutes on the half hour. Picket lines were mounted from midnight on Friday outside BBC premises across the country, with the NUJ predicting a “solid response” to the walkout. The BBC admitted it expected widespread disruption to services and said it was disappointed by the industrial action and apologised to viewers and listeners. Negotiations with the NUJ over compulsory redundancies at BBC World Service and BBC Monitoring continued until the eve of the strike, but no agreement was reached. The NUJ general secretary, Michelle Stanistreet, accused the BBC of “provoking” a strike over a handful of job losses, but the corporation said there were 100 posts for which compulsory redundancy was “regrettably unavoidable”. Stanistreet said the union offered a number of solutions to the dispute, adding that an offer from the conciliation service Acas for peace talks had not been taken up by BBC management. “There are so many people who want to leave the BBC that this could be resolved through negotiations. The NUJ has a longstanding policy of no compulsory redundancies, and it is clear that our members at the BBC are fully prepared to stand up for their colleagues under threat,” she said. “Jobs are being saved and created at management level, but journalists are losing theirs. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that BBC management wants thousands of its journalists to go on strike rather than settle the dispute.” A BBC spokesman said: “We are disappointed that the NUJ is intending to strike and apologise to our audience for any disruption to services this may cause. “We have had to reduce the number of posts in World Service and BBC Monitoring by 387, following significant cuts to the central government grants that support these services. In a significant majority of cases we have been able to reach this through voluntary redundancy or redeployment. “However, there are in excess of 100 BBC posts for which compulsory redundancy is regrettably unavoidable, and this is our focus, regardless of whether staff are members of unions.” A further 24-hour strike is due to take place on 29 July. •

Posted by on July 16, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.