EXCLUSIVE: Lyse Doucet, the BBC’s international news supremo, has said she felt she was “fighting for the license fee” when broadcasting for weeks on end in Ukraine earlier this year, as she opened up about covering warzones, “painful” World Service cuts and the digital news revolution.
Doucet, the Chief International Correspondent who has been reporting from conflicts for decades, sat down with Deadline for a rare interview earlier this month in which she passionately defended the BBC and spoke of how the early days of the Ukraine war felt like a defining moment for the corporation’s existential future. “During those days we felt like we were fighting for the future of the license fee,” said Doucet, as Rishi Sunak’s new government ponders a review into the funding model, which was due to start around the time Boris Johnson stood down as Prime Minister several months ago. “Every day, we woke up not knowing what was going to happen and felt [Ukraine] was a moment where the BBC was saying ‘We belong to all of you’.” Doucet’s coverage in the first few weeks of the tragic war, which recently moved into its ninth month, was lauded globally and she developed a formidable on-screen partnership with fellow correspondent Clive Myrie, while always finding time to praise those behind-the-camera.
The coverage was received so positively that arch-BBC sceptic Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries, the originator of the license fee review who has since moved on, used a parliamentary debate to emotionally heap praise on BBC and ITV journalists “risking their lives” on the frontline.
When they heard this news, the Ukraine-based BBC team “all cheered,” according to Doucet. “Hearing Nadine say we had met our greatest test was amazing,” she
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