The BBC’s on-air journalists were collectively paid at least £685,000 to attend 465 outside engagements between the start of July 2023 and the end of June 2024, the corporation’s external events register shows.
The register, which is published quarterly, keeps track of which BBC journalists have taken on gigs as moderators, panellists, awards judges and speakers, as well as who has paid them.
It also provides limited information about how much those journalists were paid, making it possible to calculate ranges of pay they may have received.
Which BBC journalist earned the most from outside engagements?
The register describes the sums paid as either “Below £1k”, “£1k – £5k”, “£5k – £10k” or “Over £10k”. For a short period of the past year the register gave greater detail, with pay categories for “Below £250” and “£250 – £1k”.
Based on those minimum figures, the BBC journalist who likely received the most income from outside engagements over the past year was presenter Clive Myrie, who earned at least £66,000 from 11 events.
Over the year Myrie took on three gigs that paid “Over £10k”, making it impossible to calculate an upper limit on his earnings. These three top-paid engagements were funded by the Black Police Officers Association, the British Insurance Brokers Association and financial services company Legal & General. In the latter two cases he is listed as having been an event host. The register does not always reveal the roles the journalists carried out at events.
Myrie took on a further seven events that paid between £5,000 and £10,000 (inclusive) which supplemented his £310,000+ BBC salary.
[See Press Gazette's full ranking of 54 BBC journalists paid more than Prime Minister Keir Starmer.]Myrie is one of eight BBC on-air journalists to have received more than £10,000 for an outside engagement. The others are Amol Rajan, Fiona Bruce, Jeremy Bowen, Katya Adler, Nick Robinson, Ros Atkins and Zoe Kleinman.
Robinson and Rajan, both Today programme presenters, tied for the most £10,000+ jobs, each doing four over the year. Myrie did the second most, followed by Europe editor Adler and Question Time host Bruce, who did two £10,000+ events each. Adler holds the distinction of being the only journalist on the list to have not taken any gigs worth less than £10,000 during the year.
Far more journalists received sums worth £1,000 or less, however: BBC on-air staff took on 225 such events over the year, including at least 14 that were worth £250 or less. Another 155 engagements paid between £1,000 and £5,000 and a further 67 paid from £5,000 to £10,000.
Across all the journalists who took on outside engagements, the median (typical) per-person remuneration for the whole year falls within the £1,000 to £5,000 band. The median number of engagements taken on was two, with 65 of the 156 journalists taking on one gig.
The most prolific journalist for outside events was Ireland correspondent Mark Simpson, who took on 21 external engagements and earned a minimum of £3,000 (as well as a notional maximum of £28,000).
He was followed by Newswatch presenter Samira Ahmed, who carried out 19 outside engagements paying her a total that falls in the range of between £42,500 and £110,000 – the highest minimum earnings of any journalist on this list who did not do any events worth more than £10,000.
In all, 17 BBC on-air journalists received at least £10,000 across the year for outside engagements.
The sponsors, organisers and funders who paid for the event appearances vary significantly. Some were publicly-listed corporations: investment bank JP Morgan, for example, paid security correspondent Frank Gardner between £5,000 and £10,000 to speak in March, and accounting company Ernst & Young and bank BNP Paribas each paid Nick Robinson more than £10,000 in November for unspecified roles.
Other journalism organisations also appear frequently in the register. Campaign magazine, for example, paid Samira Ahmed between £5,000 and £10,000 in March to host an event, and paid BBC climate editor Justin Rowlatt between £1,000 and £5,000 for another engagement in an unspecified role.
Many of the appearances, particularly the lower-paid ones, were funded by universities, local bodies or industry associations. The Bradford and Rotherham Chamber of Commerce, for example, paid BBC Look North presenter Amy Garcia below £1,000 for an appearance in November, and Belfast Pride gave journalist and weather presenter Barra Best £1,000 for a hosting gig in July 2023.
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