BBC News: Presenters & Rotas

IIRC Lukwesa has little or no formal training in journalism, either at degree level or by a respected (by the BBC) course, such as the Beeb's own in house training, and little or no reporting experience. Aren't the BBC a little wary of employing people to newsreader or presenter roles at national or international level (I.e. network news, news channel, national radio programmes, World News & Service etc.)?

Tom Donkin presenting the BBC World news this morning

I never seen him before is he new?

That never used to be a problem up to the early 80s or so.

Times have changed since then, though. In the 70s and 80s, news bulletins were usually of a fixed length and very well rehearsed. There were very few occasions when a newsreader would be required to interview guests/contributors live. The creation of rolling news channels has meant that presenters with a journalistic background are required because they may have to interview people at a moment's notice as well as deal with pretty much anything that's thrown at them. Even the national bulletins are completely different in format than they were 20-30 years ago.

Yes - there was a big change at the BBC in the 80s in both national and regional news. Originally newsreaders were 'presenters' who were simply that, people who could present. They could read scripts clearly, and looked OK on camera. Quite a few of them came from acting backgrounds and had no journalistic training or background at all.

ITN was a bit different - as were BBC current affairs shows like Nationwide - which were distinct from News and made by a different department (News at TVC, CA at Lime Grove).

Then in the 80s the shift from presenter-presenters to journalist-presenters started, as live interviews became routine presenters needed journalist abilities to be able to do the job. These days it's rare to find BBC News presenters without at least something approaching a background in journalism.

What does LIFO mean?

Hence the reason moria Stewart and peter sissions, where thrown out with the bath water. Wasn't sue the first bbc presenter/journalist?

Alot of good people were lost because of this.

Last In, First Out.

Not sure what you are trying to say there?

Peter Sissons was a journalist (at one point he was injured as a foreign correspondent I think, and I think he was then a sir UK Correspondent/Editor) at ITN, Moira Stuart had an acting background (She was famously a dragon in 'The Adventure Game')

Yes, I think ITN went down the journalism route a bit earlier than the BBC. Although early newscasters like Chris Chataway and Gordon Honeycombe had non-journalistic backgrounds, the likes of Alastair Burnet, Sandy Gall, Leonard Parkin and Michael Nicholson certainly did. And the new crop of newscasters in the 80s - e.g. Alastair Stewart, Carol Barnes, John Suchet, Jon Snow et al - were all journalists.

Just to ask what happened with peter? Im sure there was one saturday he was on the news channel something big happened and his interviews were rather poor.