BBC veteran appointed to top news job at RTÉ

RTÉ HAS appointed Kevin Bakhurst, the controller of the BBC News Channel, as managing director of news and current affairs and a member of the RTÉ executive board.

Mr Bakhurst (46), who has also served as deputy head of BBC Newsroom since 2010, replaces Ed Mulhall, who retired from the broadcaster last April in the wake of the controversial libel of Fr Kevin Reynolds by the A Mission to Prey programme.

Mr Bakhurst, who joined the BBC in 1989, is from Barnet in north London. He will take up his position in early September.

He will lead the reorganisation of RTÉ’s news and current affairs department, including the development of the RTÉ News Now service and the launch of a new series of investigative television documentaries to replace the axed Prime Time Investigates.

“This is one of the very few jobs that I would have considered leaving BBC News to do,” Mr Bakhurst said in a statement yesterday.

“It is an amazing opportunity to lead such a formidable team at RTÉ News and Current Affairs who rightly have a national and worldwide reputation for their journalism.”

The position vacated by Mr Mulhall has been occupied on an acting basis in recent months by Cillian de Paor, the managing editor of television news.

RTÉ is also expected shortly to announce the appointment of a new managing editor of television current affairs, a position advertised alongside the job taken up by Mr Bakhurst. This individual will report to Mr Bakhurst.

Mr Bakhurst and the incoming managing editor of television current affairs will then appoint an editor of Prime Time, an editor of Frontline and an editor of the new investigations unit.

The securing of such a senior figure from the BBC is a coup for the Irish broadcaster.

RTÉ director general Noel Curran said the job had “attracted an exceptionally strong field of national and international candidates”, adding that Mr Bakhurst had “huge and varied experience, a proven track record and key leadership skills”, as well as “a keen sense of how news delivery is changing across all media”.

The head of BBC Newsroom Mary Hockaday said her deputy had been “a very significant figure in BBC news for many years”. Mr Bakhurst had taken the BBC news channel “from level pegging to nearly double Sky’s audience”, she said in a letter to BBC staff.

One colleague, BBC foreign correspondent Fergal Keane, said: “He is a very strong personality, with a lot of integrity and the energy to get things done.”

Asked about the appointment of an Englishman to the most senior Irish broadcast news position, Mr Keane pointed to “the huge number of Irish men and women who are working in senior positions” in the British media.

Profile: Broadcasting background

HIS CV suggests that Kevin Bakhurst, the BBC executive who will move to head up RTÉ news and current affairs in the autumn, is an appointment of the highest calibre.

Mr Bakhurst (46) has been deputy head of BBC Newsroom since 2010, overseeing BBC television, radio and online news, giving him a cross-media appeal at a time when RTÉ is attempting to break down the divisions between its news departments.

He has been controller of the BBC news channel since 2005, making him the perfect candidate to develop RTÉ’s fledgling 24-hour news service, RTÉ News Now.

Mr Bakhurst was previously editor of the BBC Ten O’Clock News between 2003 and 2005, during which time the programme won awards for its coverage of the Madrid bombings, the Darfur crisis and the 7/7 bombings.

Born in Barnet in north London, he attended Haberdashers’ Aske’s School in Elstree and studied modern languages at St John’s College, Cambridge.

He joined the BBC as an assistant producer in its business and economics unit in 1989. Bakhurst, who lives outside London with his wife and three children, has also served as a magistrate and is described by friends as “very community minded”.

He has a busy summer ahead of his transfer to Dublin, owing to his involvement in the move of BBC news from Television Centre in White City to New Broadcasting House in central London, as well as being on the BBC’s London 2012 Olympics management team.

Journalist colleagues lamented his departure via Twitter yesterday.

BBC sports news correspondent James Pearce described Bakhurst as “one of the great supporters of sports news coverage in the BBC”, adding that his departure was a “big loss”, while security correspondent Frank Gardner said he had been “a great editor”.

RTÉ director general Noel Curran hinted in April that the broadcaster was likely to make an external appointment for the most senior of the five available jobs in its scandal-stung news and current affairs department, and so it has come to pass. RTÉ presenter Miriam O’Callaghan tweeted that the appointment was “our big gain”, telling @kevinbakhurst: “I know you’ll be very happy here – and we’ll all make sure you are.”