Why Carrie Gracie's principled stand made the biggest headlines

Hats off to Carrie Gracie. If you’re going to take a stand, do it when and where it will make the most impact. The story of her resignation as the BBC’s China editor broke on Sunday night. I heard it on Radio 5 Live.

On Monday morning she was co-presenting Radio 4’s Today, the BBC’s highest profile current affairs magazine where she wasn’t allowed to discuss it. But never before, and probably never again, will a presenter on a live news programme become its big story. And, don’t forget, this was a day when the Prime Minister was about to reshuffle her government. 

Gracie talked about it, live, a couple of hours later, on Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, explaining why the BBC was not only wrong but possibly breaking employment law by paying her half as much as men in comparable jobs. Had the BBC tried to hush her completely it would have only made the story bigger.

The Gracie issue stayed in the news all day, on every BBC bulletin and magazine, TV as well as radio, through to Newsnight and beyond. As Mr Punch says when he wields his big stick, that’s the way to do it. 

Significantly, all the BBC’s top management tier could produce in response was a piece of paper, a statement. Director-general Tony Hall wasn’t expected back until midweek but where was his deputy, Anne Bulford, whose portfolio includes workplace and legal issues? Or James Purnell, Director of Radio (and education, arts, religion, children’s programmes and strategy).

Or the recently appointed head of news Fran Unsworth? We knew Unsworth was at work because she informed staff that expressing an opinion on the Gracie issue would disbar them from reporting it.

When appointed the BBC made clear that Unsworth would have the same salary, ￡340,000, as her predecessor James Harding, an equality Gracie was not afforded. Yet, let us bear in mind, it is the BBC’s fairness and transparency that are also in dispute here. Gracie, like the rest of us, appears to think the actual salaries involved are all too high.

By coincidence, Radio 4’s new Book of the Week is Auntie’s War, written and read by Edward Stourton, a crisp, ironic and lightly humorous account of how broadcasting was changed by the Second World War. Stourton, you may recall, was abruptly ousted from Today by a now-departed Radio 4 controller who thought he sounded too posh, not journalistic enough. Rot, I thought at the time, and still do.

You only have to hear him occasionally presenting The World at One or catch his own regular Sunday religious affairs programme to prize his gift for getting to the point. His book is a glowing hoard of stories about the reporters, Charles Gardner and Richard Dimbleby for example, who brought us the first British live eyewitness reporting of actual combat. It also reflects a BBC constantly moulded by events, politics, personalities and public opinion, useful to remember as the Corporation tries to cut itself free from the nets it perpetually seems to weave around itself.

The Cameron Years(Radio 4, Monday) is a timely arrival at this intriguing juncture in overall British governance. Steve Richards, a political commentator whose insight is enriched by experience but untinged by malice, is looking at how a clever young prime minister’s political career came to a sudden, unforeseen end when the referendum he had pledged on whether Britain should remain in the European Union returned its historic verdict, No.

If you wonder why he rushed into the referendum, or what made him frame it in the way he did, or of whom he was afraid while doing it, this is a good guide.

Next week, how Cameron sought to modernise the Conservative party and how far he got. By an accident of fate, the first episode went out directly after the 8pm news, which broke the news of Justine Greening’s resignation from Mrs May’s cabinet, another indication of the constantly shifting sands of politics. 

The Archers had a quiet scoop of their own this week. On Thursday, the very day Michael Gove addressed the Oxford farming conference about his post-Brexit policy on subsidies for meadows, The Archers slipped in a neat little scene where gentleman farmer Brian Aldridge (Charles Collingwood) discussed it with his employee and stepson Adam Macy (Andrew Wincott). Observing due BBC balance, Brian was fairly dubious, Adam more or less positive.

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How clever of the Secretary of State’s press officer, however, to make sure the nation’s great opinion-forming programme was previously and usefully informed.