At-a-glance: BBC news review response

The review looked at coverage of the different parts of the UK

Here is an outline of 12 suggestions for improvement made by the BBC management in light of the findings:

• Monitoring stories to ensure they reflect the diversity of nations and regions and that performance is reported to senior managers on a quarterly basis.
• Setting a new objective for BBC News to improve reporting of the UK. Better labelling of stories and greater richness of coverage from across the nations and regions will form part of the objective.
• The findings of the BBC Trust's report will be highlighted to all staff and discussion encouraged throughout the journalistic community.
• Programmes and media with the most time and space, including the BBC News website, BBC Breakfast and Radio 4's Today programme, will continue to provide the BBC's richest coverage of the UK's different nations. Within this coverage, there will be more comparisons of different policies between nations and political coverage will be devolved.
• Encouraging journalists from the nations to put forward more ideas. Also, to strengthen teams of correspondents with specialisms in the nations
• Develop a programme of placements for the editors who run TV and radio news to ensure they have direct experience of working in nations and regions.
• Training to give editors a high level of knowledge of the way that the UK is changing after devolution.
• Only using London-based correspondents for big nations and regions stories when more resources are needed to support local correspondents
• Considering a new post of UK editor - to work separately from the current home editor - to help to develop within the BBC a culture of attentiveness to the whole of the UK.
• Building on the success of home editor Mark Easton's series, The Changing Face of Britain, in reporting on the UK and its evolving identity.
• Bringing together BBC specialists - in areas such as health and education - more often to liaise on key stories and themes.
• A more detailed section on nations and regions to be included in editorial policy guidelines.

E-mail this to a friend

Printable version