Long before the taunt of “fake news” put honest reporters on trial, my wife, Gwyneth Henderson, who has died aged 80, was championing their cause. As head for two decades of the BBC World Service’s training department and subsequently in influential roles elsewhere, she was driven by a cast-iron commitment to the highest standards of public interest journalism.
Gwyneth was born in Whitby, North Yorkshire, to John Henderson, a civil engineer, and his wife, Catherine (nee Bodycombe). Because of her father’s work, Gwyneth grew up in various places, including Nigeria, where she developed a lifelong interest in Africa. After attending school in St Albans, Hertfordshire, she first trained to be a teacher, and then, in the early 1960s, joined the BBC in London as a studio technician.
In the late 60s she moved on to become a radio producer in the African Service at Bush House, the home of the BBC’s overseas services. There she specialised in arts and educational programmes, and helped to pioneer African Theatre – a project whereby listeners were invited to submit radio plays and the best were aired.
After a spell working on radio programmes, including a documentary series on recent history made with, and presented by, the journalist James Cameron, in 1977 she was chosen to run the World Service training operation, which embraced journalism, presenting and other radio broadcasting skills. The range of the training expanded greatly under Gwyneth’s guidance and increasingly attracted outside demand for its expertise.
Early in her tenure she herself spent six months training broadcasters in Hong Kong under a Commonwealth aid scheme, and after the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia her department became the “go to” place for newly emerging democracies to send journalists to study broadcasting best practice. A key course for high-flying broadcasters from such countries was a six-week immersion in British journalism called Media in the UK.
In 2000 Gwyneth retired early from the BBC, but her career in the service continued. She chaired the Open Society Foundation’s media programme, which allocated funds for media projects around the world, and ran training courses for the US overseas broadcasters Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty at its Prague studios. She also co-founded the charity Media Defence (originally called Media Legal Defence Initiative), which provides legal help globally to journalists facing attempts to muzzle them, and chaired its trustees for nine years.
With a keen eye for spotting talent, Gwyneth went out of her way to improve opportunities for women and members of under-represented communities, and encouraged staff recruited to the BBC’s language services to widen their career ambitions.
She is survived by me, our daughter, Gwanwyn, grandsons Grayson and Osian, and her sisters Catherine and Margaret.
