BBC’s Deborah Turness loved attention and was a ‘super schmoozer’ – but after shunning a
It was a simple request from a respected Jewish media personality to the head of the BBC’s news operation, Deborah Turness.
Jonathan Shalit OBE, one of the entertainment industry’s best-known and longest-serving agents, wrote to Turness in March about the Corporation’s coverage of Gaza.
He was deeply disturbed by the fact that, as he saw it, the BBC was not reporting the Israeli–Palestinian conflict neutrally. It was failing to represent Hamas accurately as a terrorist organisation and implying that Israel was the brutal aggressor.
Shalit, who owns celebrity agency InterTalent, said as much in a measured email. He asked Turness to reflect on BBC News’s reporting of the conflict and to have an open discussion about it.
Turness’s reply was frankly astonishing.
Those who have worked under Deborah Turness, former head of BBC News, say that she never quite got the hang of the Corporation’s culture
Rather than respond to Shalit’s concerns – or even acknowledge them – Turness simply took issue with Shalit using her private email address.
She wrote: ‘Dear Jonathan, Please can I ask that you use only my BBC News email (cc’d) and delete my private email?
‘And please kindly do not share it with anyone. Thank you. Deborah.’
Her response was sent from her iPhone – indicating she likely tapped out the message on the move.
Sources close to Mr Shalit have told the Daily Mail that he was so ‘dumbfounded’ by Turness’s blunt and unfeeling response that he didn’t press the matter.
Instead, he replied two days later confirming that he wouldn’t share the email address with anyone else. Though, he notes, Turness had given him her personal email herself years before.
Friends of Shalit point out that she could have forwarded his email to her work account and replied there directly. One said: ‘She ignored the question and dismissed his very staging forward request for answers about her failure of impartiality.
Jonathan Shalit OBE is a titan in his field and a highly influential figure who owns the celebrity agency InterTalent
‘Instead, she was more concerned and preoccupied that he had used her personal email address. It’s a baffling response. It was like Deborah simply didn’t care.
‘She forgot she worked for the licence-fee payer and was not prepared to have a conversation. It was very arrogant.’ Shalit is a titan in his field and a highly influential figure.
In sharp contrast, Shalit says that Director General Tim Davie will always respond, his messages ‘marked by professionalism and full transparency’.
In my work as a showbiz journalist, I can attest to this. If the Beeb’s in-house press office is being obstructive, I have often contacted Davie directly and he almost always responded helpfully.
Meanwhile, Shalit’s extraordinary interaction with Turness also chimes with my own experience of the TV executive.
One can only imagine how Deborah Turness must have felt arriving to work at Broadcasting House on Monday only to be ‘doorstepped’ by the BBC’s highly rated special correspondent Lucy Manning, who was once Turness’s junior reporter at ITV News
Those who have worked under Turness tell me that she never quite got the hang of the Corporation’s culture.
She spent much of her career at commercial companies such as ITV and US network NBC News. In April 2021 she was made CEO of ITN – responsible for ITV News, Channel 4 News and Channel 5 News, before joining the BBC in 2022 on a £400,000 salary.
‘Your responsibilities when you run a commercial news service are different to those of the BBC,’ says one associate of Turness, 58. ‘I don’t think she understood the responsibility that went with that job at the BBC.
Her past exploits suggest that she is certainly a more colourful figure than her ‘very impressive but slightly dull’ predecessor Fran Unsworth.
Back in 2010, then editor of ITV News, Turness dressed as singer Lady Gaga, in a blonde wig, black bustier and lace up boots, to perform the singer’s hit Just Dance in front of hundreds of industry leaders at the Edinburgh Television Festival.
The charismatic Turness is, I’m told, a ‘super-schmoozer’.
‘She is super charming, very clever and very appealing company,’ says a former colleague.
When Turness left ITV News in 2013, I attended her leaving do. It was held at the Mayfair nightclub, Embassy, where guests included ITV breakfast presenter Fiona Phillips, her husband Martin Frizell, former This Morning editor, and news anchor Mark Austin – who now works at Sky News.
The entire room fawned over Turness – and she seemed to love the attention.
One can only imagine how she must have felt arriving to work at Broadcasting House yesterday only to be ‘doorstepped’ by the BBC’s highly rated special correspondent Lucy Manning, who was once Turness’s junior reporter at ITV News.
‘Lucy was a star, Deborah knew it and she was her protegee,’ a source tells me.
‘Now she’s putting questions to her about her downfall. It just about sums it all up.