Richard James Ayre
Encyclopedia
Richard Ayre is a member of the BBC Trust
BBC Trust
The BBC Trust is the governing body of the British Broadcasting Corporation. It is operationally independent of BBC management and external bodies, and aims to act in the best interests of licence fee payers....

, the governing body of the British Broadcasting Corporation. He is a former member for England of the OFCOM
Ofcom
Ofcom is the government-approved regulatory authority for the broadcasting and telecommunications industries in the United Kingdom. Ofcom was initially established by the Office of Communications Act 2002. It received its full authority from the Communications Act 2003...

 Content Board and chair of its Broadcast Review Committee. He was formerly a BBC journalist where he was Head of BBC Westminster (1989–93), Controller of Editorial Policy (1993–96) and Deputy Chief Executive of BBC News
BBC News
BBC News is the department of the British Broadcasting Corporation responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs. The department is the world's largest broadcast news organisation and generates about 120 hours of radio and television output each day, as well as online...

 (1996–2000).

BBC

Richard Ayre began his career as a reporter in Northern Ireland. In 1988 the then Home Secretary Douglas Hurd
Douglas Hurd
Douglas Richard Hurd, Baron Hurd of Westwell, CH, CBE, PC , is a British Conservative politician and novelist, who served in the governments of Margaret Thatcher and John Major between 1979 and his retirement in 1995....

 banned Sinn Féin
Sinn Féin
Sinn Féin is a left wing, Irish republican political party in Ireland. The name is Irish for "ourselves" or "we ourselves", although it is frequently mistranslated as "ourselves alone". Originating in the Sinn Féin organisation founded in 1905 by Arthur Griffith, it took its current form in 1970...

 from the airwaves in response to Irish Republican Army
Irish Republican Army
The Irish Republican Army was an Irish republican revolutionary military organisation. It was descended from the Irish Volunteers, an organisation established on 25 November 1913 that staged the Easter Rising in April 1916...

 bombing campaigns. It was seen by many as extremely damaging to freedom of speech and the press in Britain. When Ayre became Controller of Editorial Policy he took legal advice and was satisfied that the prohibition could not stop the use of actors' voices to replace the more cumbersome use of subtitling [1] This is credited as having rendered the prohibition increasingly ridiculous. He also re-wrote the BBC's Producer Guidelines into the most comprehensive manual of programme making ethics, which became a model for many broadcasters worldwide. He established Britain's first bi-media (television and radio) centre at BBC Millbank, introducing the first digital editing to network journalism. In 1995 Ayre played a key part in steering the Panorama interview with Diana, Princess of Wales
Diana, Princess of Wales
Diana, Princess of Wales was the first wife of Charles, Prince of Wales, whom she married on 29 July 1981, and an international charity and fundraising figure, as well as a preeminent celebrity of the late 20th century...

 to air - a decision which infuriated the BBC's then Chairman Marmaduke Hussey[2].

In March 2010, the Government announced that Ayre would join the BBC Trust
BBC Trust
The BBC Trust is the governing body of the British Broadcasting Corporation. It is operationally independent of BBC management and external bodies, and aims to act in the best interests of licence fee payers....

 - the governing body of the Corporation - replacing fellow journalist Richard Tait
Richard Tait
Professor Richard Tait CBE, is Director of the Centre for Journalism Studies at Cardiff University and a member of the BBC Trust, the governing body of the British Broadcasting Corporation....

.

Freedom of Information

Richard Ayre became a founder member of the board of the Food Standards Agency
Food Standards Agency
The Food Standards Agency is a non-ministerial government department of the Government of the United Kingdom. It is responsible for protecting public health in relation to food throughout the United Kingdom and is led by a board appointed to act in the public interest...

 [4] which pioneered open access with web casts of board meetings and fully published documentation. He was Chair of Article 19
ARTICLE 19
ARTICLE 19 is a London-based human rights organisation with a specific mandate and focus on the defence and promotion of freedom of expression and freedom of information worldwide...

 (1993–95), and is Freedom of Information Adjudicator for the Law Society
Law society
A Law Society in current and former Commonwealth jurisdictions was historically an association of solicitors with a regulatory role that included the right to supervise the training, qualifications and conduct of lawyers/solicitors...

. [5] He led OFCOM's 2007 enquiry into abuse of premium rate telephone services in television programmes [6]. He conducted a review of broadcasting in Kuwait following the invasion by Iraq and following the allied invasion he chaired the Editorial Review Board for Al Mirbad - the first independent Iraqi-run radio and TV station [7].

External links

BBC Trust biography: Richard Ayre
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