A man wearing a mask walks past the BBC headquarters in London.BEN STANSALL / AFP
The British state network BBC yesterday reactivated the layoff plan that it had paused during the first months of the coronavirus pandemic.
So it was so that the casualties, which affect only the news area, would not weaken the newsroom at a time of extraordinary news need.
Now the plan is back, expanding the number of outings.
To the 450 people who announced last January that he was going to do without, he now adds another 70, with the aim of complying with the plan to save 88 million euros in the news department that began in 2016. A need now pressing for the losses caused because of the health crisis.
In total there will be 520 jobs from a staff of 6,000 people.
Yesterday also the British newspaper
The Guardian
announced that it was laying off 180 workers (70 of them from the newsroom).
The BBC also announced at the beginning of the month that it is going to lay off another 450 workers from its regional stations and that as of next August it will begin to charge three million pensioners over 75 years of age its annual rate of 175 euros (of this A decision, which has confronted him with the government of Boris Johnson, has arisen a new need to cut jobs and from there come the 70 extra jobs announced yesterday).
This in the year in which the corporation is going to change its CEO, in a plan to reactivate the company.
Fran Unsworth, news director of the house, has assured that he will concentrate on telling fewer stories, with his journalists centralized in teams and not working on specific programs.
The newsroom will have fewer reporters, but, based on the organization put in place during the pandemic, it will be better coordinated.
"Covid-19 has changed all of our lives [...] and has led us to reassess exactly how we should operate as an organization," explained Unsworth.
The programming of the chain will also be affected.
Among the programs that will disappear due to these cuts is
The Andrew Neil Show
, a political space presented by the veteran journalist who gives the program its name and who has been a regular contributor to the group since the 1990s.
“Two big things have changed because of the coronavirus.
It has accentuated the financial pressure from the BBC, and has shown that a different way of working is possible.
Both things help to increase layoffs, "explained Amol Rajan, a media specialist at the BBC, yesterday after the end of Neil's program, which was already suspended at the beginning of the pandemic.
