February 17, 2022

John Witherow, editor of The Times, appeared on this week’s edition of the BBC Radio 4 Media Show.

In the wide-ranging interview, he was questioned on the relationship between the press and politicians, and he spoke about constructive journalism, investing in journalism, and why scoops are so important in keeping readers interested.

 On scoops and exclusives he told BBC Culture Editor, Katie Razzall: “I think scoops, exclusives are central to all publications. That without them, you’re just reporting the mass out there and we have to differentiate ourselves. And what we see on digital is that when you have exclusives people really engage with that, much more. And they admire the papers for doing it and we had a string of really great exclusives over the years, and that’s what people remember.”

On one scoop that recently won Scoop of the Decade at the British Journalism Awards, he told Radio 4: “Well that was brilliant reporting by Sean O’Neill, who independently discovered this, that Oxfam had been employing people who were abusing their aid workers on quite a scale. It was a shocking story because Oxfam has such a high reputation.”

He added: “I hope we have made The Times and The Sunday Times successful, financially stable. With good journalists, we have lots of incredible talented journalists on these titles and we need to ensure they will survive for another 200 years plus. That is the key objective. We are just guardians of these titles and have to establish them to be successful for the future.”