The Spike: Jess Brammar’s deleted tweets

Alfie Habershon | 13th October 2021 | Magazine

The BBC’s new head of news has found herself at the centre of a rupture over the impartiality of Britain’s public broadcasting

Jess Brammar leads the charge for social justice without apology. Sporting a heavy blonde fringe over her thoughtful face, she is well known as a relentless campaigner against racism, gender inequality and government austerity. Her former team at the BBC’s Newsnight won awards for its coverage of the Grenfell Tower fire and the 2018 Westminster bullying scandal. When Brammar left HuffPost last year, her goodbye email insisted that reporting must “keep making trouble for the people in power who deserve it”. But this year, it was Brammar’s career plans that threatened deep trouble for journalism itself, following the obstruction of her appointment as BBC executive editor by Sir Robbie Gibb, a BBC board member and former director of communications in Theresa May’s government. Gibb warned director of news Fran Unsworth that Brammar’s role would “shatter the government’s fragile trust in the BBC”, as reported by the Financial Times. Brammar, previously a poster child for ethical reporting a...

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