John Wilson

John Wilson, the BBC's first Controller of Editorial Policy, has died, aged 87.  

He was appointed in  September 1987, by John Birt. In an interview in 1993, he described what the job was supposed to do. 

"The idea was to have someone who would be a touchstone for Editorial standards for all of the factual programmes for the BBC, that's television and radio,  national television, national radio, local radio, regional television and of course, internationally as well. I thing one of the concerns had been that programme-makers all over the BBC, in what is nowadays and was certainly true then, an ever changing programme-making population, needed someone to whom they could tum to who'd had quite a lot of experience of editorial issues and to whom they could say, 'Look we have this problem, what do you think we should do ?'. That really was my role, was to give advice and guidance to programmes ad hoc, as they needed it but also to be a source for the stating of programme standards after discussions and whatever."

The transcript of the full interview provides marvellous insights on Northern Ireland, The Westland Affair, various tricky Panoramas, and political bullying of the BBC. 

John was running the Six O'Clock News on Radio 4 when I first met him as a trainee in late 1973; the three-day week was looming, and, during the programme, a new Government edict came through about the use of generators to keep evening football matches going. I was told to write it up as 'a tight half', and passed it to John, who said it was too long. In the corridor outside the studio, he asked "What's the real point ?" I said "Football clubs who thought they could use generators for night matches have been told they can't". 

"Why didn't you write that in the first place ?".  

Later, when John was in charge of all network radio news and current affairs, he was one of few senior managers who 'got' Newsbeat. He would regularly appear, quietly, at the back of the studio during the 1230 transmission, then chat with us afterwards. When there were arguments from others that we weren't following newsroom 'leads', he usually took our side. |