The Panorama editor on winning awards, the storm over the Primark apology, why why it is worth using Cher Lloyd to tell a story – and a lasting childhood encounter with the show
When Tom Giles was a teenager he had an unusual encounter with the programme he now edits. His naval architect father starred in a Panorama programme called David and Goliath about his campaign to persuade the Ministry of Defence and British Shipbuilders to order smaller, cheaper ships. Giles the schoolboy watched from behind the sofa.
However, his father's non-conformism has had an impact on him, he acknowledges: "I've been brought up to tilt against established thinking on all sides. I do try and reflect that."
Panorama, which he joined as deputy editor in 2008, will celebrate 60 years of a somewhat bumpy existence in 2013, and has regained a spring in its step under his stewardship. Last month it won a hat trick of Royal Television Society journalism awards for Undercover Care: The Abuse Exposed, broadcast last May. The Winterbourne View care home was immediately closed, and there were prosecutions and anguished parliamentary debate. Producer Joe Plomin and undercover journalist Joe Casey were also feted for an influential piece of work. The RTS citation said: "In a year when there has been a question mark over investigative journalism this film is part of TV's answer."
"I was very proud of it," Giles says. He gave freelance reporter Casey, named RTS young journalist of the year, a contract with the programme. "What I would say is getting experienced investigative journalists is difficult, but I have not seen any sense that younger people don't want to do it. People want to be part of this."Also highly ranked though just missing an RTS award was a second Panorama special, Fifa's Dirty Secrets, broadcast three days before the vote on hosting the 2018 World Cup . The flagship series' claim to a 9pm high-profile slot was also demonstrated when a BBC1 drama was moved to make way for its special on the Stephen Lawrence murder trial verdicts in January.
But it has not all been plain sailing for Giles. Days after Undercover Care was broadcast, the BBC Trust ordered Panorama to apologise to Primark for a sequence in a 2008 report on the retailer, showing two small boys in a Bangalore clothing workshop stitching sequins. The trust's finding was that the footage was "more likely than not … not authentic". Although the programme was broadcast before Giles joined, it illustrates the hazards of being the editor of a current affairs strand undertaking investigative journalism. "For me, the trust finding was about as serious as it gets, it was pretty bad," he acknowledges. Giles told his team, many of them angered by the judgment, to "be grown up about it" while taking steps to prevent any repetition. Freelancers are now sent on courses, especially if they are going abroad, and instructed on filming undercover and taking contemporaneous notes.
In recent months Panorama has faced losing the £500,000 annual top-up it receives to fund investigative journalism, because of BBC News cuts. But director general Mark Thompson stepped in to save the top-up, Giles says. Its overall annual budget of £6.5m has also been protected from the Delivering Quality First cuts of up to 20%. For that it makes 40 half-hour programmes a year, plus – as agreed by BBC1 controller Danny Cohen – seven one-hour specials. "What makes a special is impact," says Giles. "Undercover Care set the bar high, and it's very hard to be prescriptive."
The average cost of Panorama is £225,000 per hour. About 10 programmes are made by independents, 11 come from BBC Northern Ireland, and one from Scotland. "It is not a great lot [of money], so that investigations money is incredibly important, for every one of those projects like Undercover Care, you have to abandon one, so it's really important we have the room to do that."
But Panorama is losing several posts. One old hand, Vivian White, the reporter on next Monday's Panorama investigation into tactics used by Rupert Murdoch's TV empire against its competitors, is taking voluntary redundancy. Another veteran journalist, John Ware, since 2007 part of the wider current affairs team, is also going. Jane Corbin is now freelance. The core on-screen reporting team has been whittled down to Paul Kenyon (the reporter on Undercover Care), John Sweeney, Shelley Jofre, Raphael Rowe and Richard Bilton. Under a previous cutback in current affairs the series also loses a producer.
Giles took over in 2010 from Sandy Smith, now editor of The One Show, who reduced Panorama from 40 to 29 minutes. His first move was to ditch the introductions by Jeremy Vine that were brought in when Peter Fincham, then controller of BBC1, moved Panorama back from Sunday to Monday in 2007.
Vine was dropped partly to save money, says Giles, but "the real reason is I thought it's better to get on with it. An 8.30pm viewer just wants the story, not someone in White City telling them about it."
His agenda is to be "more reactive to big events, reflect the wider economy and people's fears, and free up resources for big 9pm programmes". Panorama's 9pm specials have also tackled social policy issues, as with Kids in Care: The Truth about Adoption. Giles has ruled out studio discussions, since Question Time and Newsnight fulfil that role.
Using celebrity guest presenters is "unusual", he says, but Alastair Campbell's recent report on middle class booze addicts showed they can work by winning 4.06 million viewers. "We didn't have as much negative reaction to him as I had expected," Giles notes. "The extra thing for me was that he was willing to say that maybe the Labour government didn't get it right on 24-hour drinking." One of the largest recent audiences was 5 million for The Truth about Supermarket Wars, presented by Sophie Raworth.
Panorama's agenda has become more populist at times – no surprise, as it is up against Coronation Street on Mondays. "It's partly to do with the 8.30pm slot, it's an incredibly broad BBC1 audience, which tends to be older, more upmarket, but at times it shifts considerably." A recent programme on cyber-bullying, featuring Cher Lloyd, an X Factor contestant, attracted younger viewers, as did John Sweeney's forays into scientology and last summer's programme on the riots. "I am trying to make everything stand out as much as I can," Giles says, "there is nothing off-limits."
Since Giles became editor, Panorama's average annual ratings have gradually increased, from 2.8 million to 3 million last year. He modestly puts this down to recent audience-grabbing news, but argues another factor is speedy reactions. "We were like a rabbit caught in the headlights in the old days, we did not move as quickly as we should."
After university, Giles got his break with a traineeship at the Times. But, in pursuit of his ambition to be a foreign correspondent, he left to join BBC World Service. "Then television news came for me." His wide experience includes being a field producer in hot spots such as Rwanda and working with many of the biggest names in television.
The experience of editing Panorama is "really full-on, absolutely full-on, it suits me," he says. It also offers an upwards trajectory – particularly for those, like him, who also have Newsnight experience – into the BBC's top management tier. Previous editors include Mark Thompson and Peter Horrocks, now director of the World Service. When this is pointed out, Giles laughs: "It is a funny old job. It is enormously helpful for people who go up the BBC hierarchy to know what it is like on the job. It suits me."