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BBC Axes ‘HARDtalk’ As Dozens Of Layoffs Hit News Division
The BBC has closed 'HARDtalk' and made 130 redundancies in its news division the day after Tim Davie made a speech on World Service funding.
The news has emerged as part of the wider 500-person-layoff program that was announced earlier this year by Director General Tim Davie, as the corporation grapples with a deficit of £500M ($654M) amid tricky economic headwinds. Davie delivered a speech yesterday in which he urged more government funding for global news, as he warned that Russia and China are filling gaps vacated by the World Service with “unchallenged propaganda.” HARDtalk launched in 1997 and is hosted by Stephen Sackur, who tweeted today that the move is “depressing news for the BBC” for a show that stresses the “importance of independent, rigorous deeply-researched journalism.” He pointed to interviews with the likes of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Hugo Chavez and Emmanuel Macron from down the years.
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