The BBC has appointed the former editor of Panorama as the director of news and current affairs following the scandal over US President Donald Trump‘s speech edit.
Rachel Jupp, director of BBC News documentaries and longform journalism, will take on the £400,000-a-year role nearly 12 months after the previous chief executive resigned.
Deborah Turness stood down in November last year alongside director-general Tim Davie in the fallout of a spliced clip of Trump’s January 6 speech for a Panorama film, with the American leader suing the corporation for £7billion over the resulting ‘fabricated statement’.
Ms Jupp’s previous roles include editorial executive for BBC Content, editor of Panorama – although she had left several years before the controversial documentary was aired – and deputy editor of Newsnight.
Ms Jupp said she was ‘honoured’ to take on the role and wanted to ‘champion our vital, independent and impartial journalism, deepen the trust people have in the BBC and meet our audiences wherever they are’.
She added that she was ‘looking forward to working with our dedicated, brilliant teams across the UK and around the world’.
Morale is said to be low at the broadcaster after some 550 jobs have been cut in an announcement this year, in efforts to save money, with 41 job losses most recently at BBC Sport.
The BBC is expected to further cut an estimated 2,000 jobs to make £160million to £500million in savings across the news, nations and content divisions by 2028-29.
Rachel Jupp has been appointed as the director of news and current affairs at the BBC
The BBC’s latest annual report detailed how the corporation’s financial outlook ‘deteriorated’ in the second half of 2025.
Ms Jupp will become a member of the BBC’s Executive Committee and be paid a salary of £400,000.
The new director, who joined the BBC in 2013 after nine years at Channel 4 News, will begin her role which oversees 4,500 people this month.
Jonathan Munro, who is believed to have also been a contender, stepped down after 11 months at the helm and will return to his substantive role as deputy director of News and BBC News global director.
BBC director-general Matt Brittin thanked Mr Munro ‘for his deep experience, calm head and steady hand’.
He went on to describe Ms Jupp as ‘an outstanding editorial leader, widely regarded for her news judgment, fairness and high standards’.
‘She brings a clarity of vision for the future, and the determined, collaborative approach needed to strengthen BBC News,’ he added.
‘In a world of infinite choice, audiences are fragmenting, trust is scarce and facts are contested. BBC News remains the most used and most trusted news provider around the world and across the UK.
‘It is our duty to recommit to the BBC’s distinctive journalistic mission while reinventing how we serve audiences, and to rise to these challenges.
‘In Rachel, we have someone who can do both, with a fresh perspective to lead BBC News into a new era.’
Last month, court documents showed Trump plans to use emails sent internally by the BBC as evidence in his defamation trial against the broadcaster.
Trump’s legal team will use an apology from Samir Shah, the BBC chairman, to try to prove the Panorama documentary exploring Trump’s return to the forefront of American politics was produced maliciously.
In the edited clip, viewers heard him say: ‘We’re going to walk down to the Capitol… and I’ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell.’
Meanwhile, during the speech the fight lines came more than 50 minutes later, which Trump says made it look like he incited the mob.
The BBC denies defamation and argued that the case should be thrown out because the documentary was broadcast for a UK audience, not the US, and that the broadcaster’s apology made clear that the error made in editing was unintentional.
