Sarah Sands and the crisis at the Today programme

One of the strangest things about the BBC in recent times is how many top jobs have gone to print journalists. This is especially true in news and current affairs. From Peter Jay, Andrew Neil and Andrew Marr to James Harding, Amol Rajan, Ian Katz, Nick Watt and Sarah Sands. Some have been hugely successful — Neil and Marr stand out. Most, however, have not done well and yet the BBC keeps appointing them in ever-larger numbers.

In recent years, James Harding (head of BBC news and current affairs), Ian Katz (editor of Newsnight) and now Sarah Sands (editor of Radio 4’s Today programme) have all come and gone. None have lasted much more than four years in their high-profile jobs.

Sarah Sands announced that she would resign from the Today programme, after only two-and-a-half years in the job (in the last thirty years no other editor of the Radio 4 programme has served less than four years). She will leave in September, and until then there will be much talk about musical chairs at the BBC. The important questions though are about the legacy she leaves behind.

One problem has been replacing presenters. Sands started in May 2017. Jim Naughtie had just departed, after more than twenty years on the show. Since then Sarah Montague (2001-18) and John Humphrys (1987-2019) have both left. They are all big names to replace and there is a lot of grumbling about whether the current team (Justin Webb, Mishal Husain, Nick Robinson and Martha Kearney) have filled the gaps.

None of the new presenters have been there for anything like as long as their predecessors and in her time, Sands has only brought in Martha Kearney. During her reign, a number of occasional presenters have been tried out — Jon Sopel, Matthew Price and Simon Jack, among them — and none of them have established themselves as an obvious addition to the team.

Perhaps the biggest gap was left by Evan Davis (2007-14) who now gets up at a more pleasant hour to present PM. He was the only recent Today presenter who knew anything about economics. It is extraordinary that BBC Radio’s flagship news programme has only had one economically literate presenter — Sands has failed to deal with this problem.

How representative of the country are the presenters? Naughtie is Scottish, Humphrys is Welsh. The current batch are very white, very southern and middle-aged. Only Robinson is from the north and only Husain is under 56 or from an ethnic minority. Presenters on other key BBC radio shows such as Jane Garvey (from Liverpool), Adrian Chiles and Adrian Goldberg (both from Birmingham) seem a world away.

Another big problem has been allegations of bias — nearly all the critical responses to Sarah Sands’s impending departure on social media highlight this issue. Today is part of the Westminster Bubble. It is the authentic voice of the metropolitan liberal consensus. The choice of guest editors after Christmas summed up the problem perfectly — the artist Grayson Perry, Baroness Hale, George the Poet, Charles Moore and Greta Thunberg. Moore was the only one among them from the right, just a few weeks after the biggest Conservative victory since Margaret Thatcher.

During the election campaign, Robinson and Husain were particularly aggressive towards Conservative and pro-Brexit politicians. The government has taken the previously unthinkable step of boycotting Today, in protest at its anti-Brexit and anti-Johnson bias.

All programmes have bees in their bonnet. Today under Sands has a strange obsession with medical cannabis and has given an enormous amount of airtime to Richard Ratcliffe, husband of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe who remains imprisoned in Iran on spurious charges. It produces countless outside broadcasts from universities, which during the election campaign meant Labour politicians could not attend, as it would have meant crossing pickets by the University and Colleges Union. In general, the programme shares the BBC’s liberal consensus on cultural and social issues.

There are troubling gaps too. Today failed to take a strong enough stand over Labour anti-Semitism or to draw attention to the persecution of Christians in the Muslim world or of gay people in large parts of the world. The decline of the Church of England here, of the Catholic Church in parts of Europe or the extraordinary cultural and social revolutions in Ireland have not received due attention.

On health, it gives disproportionate airtime to favourite experts like the King’s Fund, the Lancet and the former Tory and Lib Dem MP, Sarah Wollaston. On China, Russia and the rise of populism it has followed the news agenda set by others, rather than leading it as such a programme should do. There has been a lack of long-term analysis, and an over-reliance on journalists and politicians rather than historians, economists and social thinkers.

Ultimately, Sarah Sands hasn’t done enough to change any of this. She has not shaken things up, made big changes either in presenters, experts or subjects. Thought for the Day is still there. She inherited an audience of 7.66 million (August 2017) and it has fallen significantly since then.

There will be much talk about her successor but less about what needs to change on-air. All this is symptomatic of Lord Hall’s BBC. People are jumping ship, but there is little sign of a new vision.