John Simpson marches on — into a new show

 
p16 p17 diary John Simpson reporting on a "friendly fire" incident in Northern Iraq between Mosul and Kirkuk, where American special forces and Kurdish fighters & BBC film crew were killed and injured . KATE ADIE - British journalist Kate Adie hosts the Amnesty International UK Media Awards at the Cafe Royal in London July 4, 2007. Picture taken July 4, 2007. REUTERS/James Boardman
bbc, Reuters
18 December 2012

While other reporters hang up their boots, BBC world affairs editor John Simpson, 68, marches on. From the spring he will be fronting a new monthly current affairs programme called The Editors on BBC1.

BBC specialists such as Nick Robinson, Stephanie Flanders and Robert Peston will be able to expand on their news reports, presented by Simpson from wherever he happens to be.

One wonders what Kate Adie, a rival of Simpson’s, especially in Tiananmen Square in 1989, will think. Apart from presenting Radio 4’s From Our Own Correspondent, Adie has given up foreign assignments while Simpson keeps on going, as does David Dimbleby, 74. It raises the question of whether there is one rule for men and another for women at the BBC.

As it will have to rely on the views of its contributors, the show may be dangerous territory for Robinson, Flanders and Peston, who are meant to be impartial in an age of hotly opinionated blogs.

Simpson spends a lot of time at his home in Chelsea and doesn’t often enter BBC premises unless he can help it — he is besotted with his young son by his South African wife Dee Kruger. He writes a monthly column for the British Airways magazine High Life.

His new role may encourage the BBC to promote more women to editorial on-screen roles — they already dominate the higher ranks of management in BBC News.

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