Forty-six BBC journalists earned above £178,000 last year from their work for the corporation, according to the BBC’s annual report for 2023/24 – three more than the year before.
BBC News at Six and Ten presenter Huw Edwards remains at the top of the ranking despite being off-air from July 2023 and for most of the financial year covered by the report.
In total some 54 BBC news staff are paid more than £178,000 (which is the cut-off for the BBC on disclosing top earners). By comparison, prime minister Keir Starmer is paid just over £167,000 a year.
Edwards’ salary was somewhere between £475,000 to £479,999 for the year to 31 March 2024. That was a 6% rise from £435,000 to £439,999 in 2022/23.
Scroll down for the full table of the highest-paid BBC journalists for 2023/24
Edwards left screens after The Sun reported a BBC presenter was alleged to have paid a young person for explicit images. He was identified by his wife Vicky Flint who said he had been hospitalised due to a serious mental health episode.
Edwards formally resigned in April this year on medical advice. He did not receive a payoff but did receive full pay while he was off-air, which the BBC said was “normal policy” for staff while suspended.
Asked during a press briefing about the annual report on Tuesday how the salary paid to Edwards even though he was only on air for three months of the financial year was good value to licence fee payers, BBC director general Tim Davie said: “We’re always trying to be very judicious with the spending of public money and no one wants to waste a pound but what you’re trying to do, and from the onset of that affair, was trying to act proportionately, fairly and navigate this appropriately. I think that’s what we did…”
[Also out today: BBC to cut 500 more jobs as revenue falls 6% to £5.4bn]
Other than Edwards, two presenters earned more than £400,000: Question Time presenter Fiona Bruce and BBC Radio Ulster and BBC One (NI) presenter Stephen Nolan both took home between £405,000 and £409,999.
Separately, in our list of the top-paid journalism managers, CEO of news and current affairs Deborah Turness was also above the £400,000 mark earning between £410,000 and £414,999.
There were six new journalist entrants to the top-paid list this year: five of the main presenters on the BBC News Channel which merged the UK and international channels last year (Ben Thompson, Christian Fraser, Lucy Hockings, Ben Brown and Maryam Moshiri) as well as BBC News at One/Six/Ten presenter Jane Hill.
Of those still working for the BBC, only one was no longer on the list when compared to last year: Emma Barnett, who until April was presenter of Woman’s Hour but is moving to Today. In 2022/23 when she also presented about 20 editions of Newsnight she earned between £185,000 and £189,999 but this year she no longer made the £178,000 minimum cut-off to be included on the public list.
Some 43% of the highest-paid journalists list was made up of women – about the same as in 2022/23. This is higher than across the BBC’s top-earning on-air figures overall, of whom 37% were women this year.
The journalists to see the biggest growth in their BBC pay last year were Today presenter Nick Robinson (£345,000-£ and BBC News at One/Six/Ten presenter Reeta Chakrabarti (£270,000-£274,999) whose earnings were both up 25%.
Also growing their earnings by more than a fifth was BBC Breakfast presenter Jon Kay (£225,000-£229,999) as a result of his permanent move to the programme.
In total 28 of the 46 journalists saw their earnings rise last year, with 11 seeing double-digit growth.
Four – Amol Rajan, Martha Kearney, Sophie Raworth and Kirsty Wark – saw their BBC earnings go down.
See below for the top-earning on-air BBC journalists in the 2022/23 financial year – we have included the on-air news and current affairs staff as categorised by the BBC, plus broadcasters that we consider to be in a primarily journalistic role like Jeremy Vine and several 5 Live presenters.
Scroll down further for our list of the highest-paid BBC news and current affairs managers – a list that has three extra people compared to the previous year. After Turness is her deputy CEO Jonathan Munro on £285,000-£289,999.
Email pged@pressgazette.co.uk to point out mistakes, provide story tips or send in a letter for publication on our "Letters Page" blog
