The BBC has announced the headline presenting lineup for its upcoming relaunch of the BBC News Channel, following the merger of its domestic and international channels under one roof. A convenient way to reinvent itself “for a digital age”, or in other words, save money…

The five lucky “chief presenter” anchors are Matthew Amroliwala, Yalda Hakim, Christian Fraser, Lucy Hockings, and Maryam Moshiri. Lesser-known names, though Guido congratulates them all…

Two of those who didn’t make the cut will be more familiar, though: both Martine Croxall and Geeta Guru-Murthy have not been promoted. Co-conspirators will remember it was Martine who, just last year, couldn’t contain her on-air excitement at Boris withdrawing from the Tory leadership race. Geeta, meanwhile, made headlines three years ago after making the astute observation that a Brexit celebration rally in Parliament square had a lot of “very white” faces.

At the time, the BBC stood by Geeta, though they did bench Croxall for about a week. Now they’re both on the way out after all. Till next time…

The BBC has admitted presenter Martine Croxall did breach impartiality rules when she asked “Am I allowed to be this gleeful? Well I am” after Boris pulled out of the Tory leadership contest. The BBC confessed that her “remarks and reactions… caused a significant risk the audience could believe opinions were being expressed on the Conservative leadership contest.” 

“Taken together, this meant that this edition of The Papers did not meet our editorial standards, as it gave the audience the opportunity to infer an editorial position on the part of the BBC. This does not accord with the BBC’s commitment to editorial impartiality.”

Martine hasn’t apologised, merely tweeted that she’s back presenting on BBC News from 11 am. No contrition…

BBC presenter Martine Croxall has been taken off-air for an unspecified period for her “gleeful” reaction to the news that Boris Johnson had pulled out of the leadership race. Croxall was presenting the channel’s newspaper review last night when news broke that Boris had withdrawn from the contest. She opened the programme by joking “Am I allowed to be this gleeful? Well I am…”, and even admitted she was “probably breaking some terrible due impartiality rule by giggling”. It turns out she was right after all: now she’s been benched…

A spokesperson for the BBC said:

“BBC News is urgently reviewing last night’s edition of The Papers on the News channel for a potential breach of impartiality. It is imperative that we maintain the highest editorial standards. We have processes in place to uphold our standards, and these processes have been activated.”

Hardly a surprise…