BBC: keep top wages secret
MARK Thompson, the director general of the BBC, fired a warning shot to the government and the BBC Trust yesterday, insisting it would be “damaging and destructive” to publish the salaries of the corporation’s top stars.
He said he accepted the decision by the BBC Trust to force the corporation to publish the names of its highest earners in salary bands, and said that narrower bands would be published in the future.
But in a bid to pre-empt further attempts to make the BBC transparent, Thompson said he would refuse to reveal the exact salaries of individual stars.
The director-general even claimed that publishing the wages of its highest earners would push up the cost of recruiting stars, because the BBC actually pays its top talent less than commercial rivals.
He said: “I continue to believe it would be wrong and it would be damaging and destructive to the BBC and its ability to get the top stars to actually publish individual salaries.”
The BBC is set to come under increasing pressure to publish the salaries of stars like Newsnight host Jeremy Paxman and Radio 1 DJ Chris Moyles, after the coalition government started publishing the names of big earners on the public payroll.
But the corporation believes it should be excluded from the transparency drive, because it competes with commercial broadcasters.