from Religion Media Centre
The National Union of Journalists has revealed cuts to the BBC’s Religion and Ethics department as the corporation seeks to save £500 million by cutting 10 per cent of its costs and 2,000 jobs. In a statement yesterday, the NUJ’s BBC Audio chapel said: “The teams making Radio 4 programmes are facing 11 post closures… The Religion and Ethics department is being slashed and The Daily Service, one of the longest-running radio programmes in the world, will have a significant budget cut. A new digital format is proposed, leading to questions around how digitally excluded listeners will be served”.
The statement also referred to cuts at Radio 4 programmes “You and Yours” and “Loose Ends”. NUJ general secretary Laura Davison said the union is “alarmed” by news of further cuts across BBC Radio as “a huge part of the BBC’s success” had been to provide content for diverse audiences to understand the world we live in. The NUJ is urging BBC management to reconsider these decisions to avoid “heading towards a doom spiral of cuts and diminishing services”, and to instead focus on securing a sustainable funding settlement through Charter Renewal.
The union has written to the Chancellor, calling for urgent intervention for the BBC in the upcoming Autumn Budget to prevent further cuts. There has been no BBC response to the statement so far, but after other recent cutbacks announced last week, the Director of BBC Sounds Jonathan Wall said significant savings were needed and they were “reshaping BBC speech audio” and accelerating growth on digital platforms to reach more people.