Victoria Derbyshire responded exactly as you might expect to a tweet from the BBC’s editorial director about the importance of “original journalism”.
In the last few weeks, the presenter has been vocal about her disappointment over the BBC’s decision to axe her daytime current affairs show – a move which has been put down to budget cuts.
Towards the end of January, Victoria said she was “devastated” about her show being axed, claiming it “[broke] tonnes of original stories”, “attract[ed] a working class, young, diverse audience” and “smash[ed] the digital figures”, all of which she claimed she was “asked to do” by BBC bosses.
So when the corporation’s editorial director Kamal Ahmed tweeted “investigations matter. Original journalism matters” on Wednesday morning, Victoria understandably had something to say about it.
“Do reconsider the decision to close our programme then,” she hit back.
Victoria previously took the BBC to task in a string of social media posts when she live-tweeted a meeting about the cuts to the corporation’s news division, including her show.
During the meeting, she doubled down on her claims she hadn’t been charged with growing the show’s linear TV audience, tweeting: “We were NEVER asked to grow the linear TV audience. Ever. We were asked to grow our digital audience - we did - our digi figures are huge (our successful digital figures appear to be an inconvenience to those making the decisions).
“Our remit when we were set up: 1. Original journalism 2. Reaching underserved audiences 3. Growing the digital figures. We achieved all 3.”
Victoria also said that ahead of the presentation – entitled Modernising BBC News – the BBC’s Head of internal comms had told those in attendance to “’enjoy and relax”.
“‘Cheery’ music in room like you hear when you’re [...]put on hold,” she added.