Former BBC journalist Mishal Husain has criticised “bombastic” journalism amid concerns that the Radio 4 Today programme which she used to host has become more editorialised.
Speaking about the changes to the current affairs radio show and media landscape, Husain said “personality-focused journalism doesn’t have to be bombastic.” However, interviewer British Vogue said she did not want to speak about new presenters Amol Rajan and Emma Barnett.
Husain, 52, has moved to front a new interview series at financial and data media company Bloomberg, as editor-at-large of Bloomberg Weekend Edition.
When asked if she was comfortable with the changes, Husain said: “What was true to me was that I would very rarely use the word ‘I’, actually on air.
“I would quite often say ‘We’ve talked to so and so’, because you’re always part of a team. From the booking of guests, the deciding to go down a certain route, the writing of a brief – broadcasting is a team effort.
“So I would always say ‘we’ and very rarely use the word ‘I’. That’s just what came naturally to me.”
She also said “the last few months have taught me there’s an aspect I can embrace and that is personality-focused journalism doesn’t have to be bombastic”.
“It doesn’t have to be about the presenters centring themselves. Hopefully, if they’re a personality with journalistic integrity, journalistic values, then they can be a conduit to the news for people,” Husain, who had been at Today since 2013, added.
Rajan and Barnett have been praised for their more informal style, speaking about their personal lives, which appeals to a younger generation, and criticised for this shift in the show’s tone by fans and newspapers.
Husain also said she does not listen to Today “as much as I used to”, as her “relationship with daily news has changed”.
The veteran journalist, who has fronted general election debates, said that she did not feel “entitled” to the jobs she lost to her colleagues, including the BBC Sunday morning politics programme that went to Laura Kuenssberg after Andrew Marr left, or the News At Ten slot that went to Clive Myrie.
“I think these things happen for a reason. I don’t look at either of those jobs and think I was entitled to do them, or I should have done them, or I wish I was doing them now,” she said.
She also said she did not want to “behave” in a way where she demanded a higher salary by using job offers to leverage a higher salary with the BBC, unlike some of her other colleagues.
The latest BBC annual report showed she earned between £340,000 and £344,999 at the corporation during the 2023/24 financial year.
Husain also spoke about news organisations, including the BBC, being “completely hamstrung” in covering the Hamas-Israel war, because of the banning of foreign journalists from Gaza.
She also said: “This is a media strategy that has meant that the life of the Palestinian civilian is in no way covered in the same way as an Israeli civilian, and both deserve to have their stories told.”
Husain, who join the BBC in 1998, has fronted The Andrew Marr Show and interviewed the Duke and Duchess of Sussex after their engagement in 2017.
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