Channel 4 News editor Esme Wren believes the programme “defied expectations” for 2024 and says it is “game on” for more agenda-setting journalism next year.
Channel 4 News won the coveted News Provider of the Year prize at the British Journalism Awards last week, beating a shortlist of fellow broadcasters ITV News and Sky News and newspaper publishers The Guardian, Times Media and The Sun.
The British Journalism Awards judges said: “From searing eye-witness journalism in Gaza to breaking new ground in coverage of the Post Office scandal, Channel 4 News has led the way providing public interest journalism which raises the reputation of our whole industry.”
This year Channel 4 News also won the International Emmy for News and News Coverage BAFTA for its reporting from Israel and Gaza, and was named the Network Daily News Programme of the Year at the RTS Awards.
Wren joined Channel 4 News in January 2022 from Newsnight, which she led for four years.
She described the job of editing Channel 4 News as “conducting the orchestra”, saying the accolades are “really all down to the team”.
Speaking to Press Gazette after the British Journalism Awards win, Wren said: “Each year brings something new, something unexpected, and as I said to the team reflecting on this year, my goodness, if we thought at the end of the year, we would have come away with the RTS, BAFTA, the Emmy and the news provider, well we would definitely have taken that. But we’ve got to think we can do even better next year.”
Wren said 2025 will be a “slightly different year editorially” because newsrooms went into 2024 knowing there would be at least two major elections in the UK and US, as well as other polls around the world. “But this next year feels like it’s game on,” she said, citing Donald Trump’s return to the White House, and the continued impact of the conflicts in Gaza/Israel and Ukraine/Russia.
She said Channel 4 News “defied expectations because often when you have those big set piece events, one may expect the strength of the BBC or the resource of BBC may beat you on those stories. We’re so much better with the unexpected because we’re quick, and we can get to the story quickly, and we can insert ourselves quickly in that story.
“And I think next year it will be about that nimbleness again, around seeing the different patterns, the different stories erupting here, there, and how they kind of play into the wider global change… But of course, our ambition will be to keep growing on these digital platforms, because we’re so mindful that increasingly, that’s where the audiences are heading.”
Wren said that moving “further and further towards that digital-first strategy” has been a key part of her job since joining Channel 4 News, with Youtube a particular priority.
Channel 4 News said people spent more than 650 million minutes with its content on Youtube in 2024. It said it has seen one of its most successful years to date on social media, with 10.2% growth in followers to reach a combined social following of 13.8 million. Its Tiktok following saw the largest growth compared to December 2023, up 70%. Overall the brand said it had 1.6 billion content views across social this year, driven largely by Gaza, Ukraine and US and UK politics,
“We are really growing and particularly with younger audiences, which is obviously for everyone so important,” Wren said. Some 5.5% of Channel 4 News’ TV viewing comes from 16 to 34-year-olds, making it the youngest-profiling news programme this year to date.
“What’s most reassuring through all of this is that the viewers, the consumers, are still watching it at length, and that’s everything, because in this sort of Tiktok world that we live in, where things are just little clips and captions, it’s so important that there’s still a place and there’s still an appetite and a distribution of content that goes in depth, that has analysis, that does things differently. And that, to me, is Channel 4 News.
“People are consuming our content still, watching videos, films that we put up on Youtube and other platforms for sometimes ten to 12 minutes. And that shows they want to understand the complexities of the stories of the times that we live through.”
The challenge for public service broadcasters in the move online, Wren said, is that they no longer have the same prominence that they do in TV programme guides.
“I think without doubt, when we lived in a more linear age, prominence was just taken for granted. When you lived in a linear age, Channel 4 would be seen on the EPG… and therefore people would know it was Channel 4, they knew what content they were consuming. But in this digital world, that sort of prominence is disappearing, and it’s been ever more challenged.
“So whilst people are consuming our content and watching it at length when it’s provided at length [online], the thing is, is there brand recognition? How do they know that’s Channel 4 News, and how can we make sure that that’s properly funded and resourced in the future as we step further and further into this digital distribution? And I think that sort of prominence is still the question that hasn’t yet been answered.”
The Media Act, passed earlier this year in the wash-up period before the election, sets rules for the first time on prominence for PSB apps on connected TV platforms like smart TVs and Apple TV. Ofcom is currently preparing to make recommendations to the Culture Secretary about what services should be affected by these rules and a consultation for industry views is open until February.
Wren said Channel 4 News has a “unique humanity and authenticity, because the way we do our storytelling feels very people centric”.
Also at the British Journalism Awards, Palestinian journalist Yousef Hammash jointly won the Marie Colvin Award for his work for Channel 4 News from Gaza, which has received more than 6.4 million views on Youtube. And sister programme Channel 4 Dispatches won the Foreign Affairs Journalism category for producing the “most startling and compelling of many entries from the Israel/Gaza conflict”.
Wren echoed Hammash in highlighting the ban on access for international journalists into Gaza. She added that nonetheless “filmmakers that we work with, much of their work they have reported themselves, and that gives the authenticity. It brings the viewer right to the heart of where that story is. We don’t like doing birds eye view, we like to be on the ground the eyewitness reporting, taking the viewer right to the centre of the story as much as we possibly can.
“And that’s what’s so unique and special about Channel 4 News, because that’s our mission statement. We take the viewer to where the story is, and we do it in a very non-egotistical, authentic way.”
Wren added that although Channel 4 News often gets “kudos” for its foreign coverage, “this year, like many others, has been as much about our home news coverage”.
The programme has been credited in the past year for revealing secret tapes showing that Post Office management had covered up its subpostmaster scandal for years, and for an undercover investigation revealing racist comments made by a Reform UK campaigner in Nigel Farage’s new constituency of Clacton which the broadcaster said has had more than 5.3 million views across online platforms.
“So I feel we’re firing on all cylinders at the moment, which is fantastic, and that’s not only down to the really hard work of the team, but also just an understanding of our place in the market: we do have that sense to disrupt, that fearlessness and the absolute independence to do the stories that we feel are right.”
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