Sir Peter Bazalgette gives the keynote speech

The BBC’s Health Editor Hugh Pym is the winner of the 2020 Charles Wheeler award for an Outstanding Contribution to Broadcast Journalism, which is now in its twelfth year.

The award ceremony is traditionally held in June at the University of Westminster’s Regent Street Cinema. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, this year’s event was held online, on 16 November.

Hugh Pym has become a familiar face and voice of authority during the pandemic. He began his journalism career in radio before moving to Channel 4 as a producer of Business Daily and then spent 10 years as an ITN correspondent. After a short stint at Sky News, he joined the BBC in 2001 and rose to become Chief Economics Correspondent and then acting Economics Editor. He was appointed as Health Editor in 2014.

Hugh’s ability to explain some of the complex causes of the Covid pandemic as well as his commentary on scientific evidence and government responses has been one of the defining features of news coverage since the outbreak of COVID-19 in the UK in March, at a time that BBC news audiences have risen to record levels. He has co-authored two books, on the Credit Crunch and on Gordon Brown’s first year as Chancellor, and his latest book Inside the Banking Crisis was published by Bloomsbury in 2014.

Sir Peter Bazalgette is chairman of ITV and former President of the Royal Television Society. He started a 40 year career in the media as a BBC News Trainee, before founding his own production company and creating such TV hits as Ready, Steady Cook, Changing Rooms and Ground Force. He became chairman of Endemol in 2005, where he was responsible for turning shows like Big Brother and Deal or No Deal into worldwide successes. He was chairman of Arts Council England from 2013 to 2017 and has been ITV chairman since May 2016. He has fellowships from BAFTA and the RTS, has chaired both the Holocaust Memorial Foundation and English National Opera, and is the author of several books including Billion Dollar Game and The Empathy Instinct.

The Charles Wheeler Award, a collaboration between British Journalism Review and the University of Westminster, started in 2009 when the inaugural winner was Jeremy Paxman. It is presented each year by members of the Wheeler family.
<

BJR Charles Wheeler Award: Previous Winners