Kevin Bakhurst

Who is Kevin Bakhurst?

Kevin Bakhurst is the Managing Director of News and Current Affairs and Deputy Director General at the Irish state broadcaster, RTÉ. He was formerly the Controller of the British digital television news channel BBC News, a position he held from December 2005 until September 2012. He was also Controller of the BBC News at One bulletin and in May 2010, he became Deputy Head of the BBC Newsroom.

Bakhurst attended Haberdasher's Aske's School in Elstree and then St John's College, Cambridge where he read French and German. After a brief spell of working at Price Waterhouse he joined the BBC in 1989, first as a researcher, and then as an assistant producer at the BBC Business and Economics Unit.

In 1990 he was promoted to become the producer of the BBC Nine O'Clock News, where he remained until 1994, when he moved to Brussels to gain further experience for BBC News. In 1996, after two years in Brussels, he returned to the UK to become the assistant editor on the BBC Nine O'Clock News, remaining with the program when it became the BBC Ten O'Clock News. From 2001 to 2003 he was an editor at the BBC News channel, before being made the acting editor of the BBC Ten O'Clock News. He was then confirmed as the permanent editor of the program in March 2004. During his two years as editor of the BBC Ten O'Clock News it won a Bafta for its coverage of the Madrid Bombings and also the Royal Television Society award for News Program of The Year.