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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Comment
Jane Martinson

Why the BBC making one journalist redundant matters – for our media and democracy

Kate Lamble
‘Kate Lamble is one of more than 100 journalists to leave the BBC since plans to save a further £500m from the BBC News budget were announced last November.’ Photograph: BBC

Kate Lamble is not a household name like Emily Maitlis or Andrew Marr, other former BBC journalists. Having risen through the ranks of specialist science journalism, Lamble has never presented a primetime show. For the past seven years, Lamble has covered the Grenfell Tower inquiry – listening to hours and hours of often heartbreaking testimony – until last week, two days after the inquiry published its final report, when she announced she had been made redundant and would be leaving the BBC.

Among more than 1,000 comments on her post on X, seen 1.5m times, was one from the survivors’ group Grenfell United. “It saddens us to see this huge error by the BBC, Kate has supported the Grenfell cause from the beginning and made our story more accessible to the public.” Lamble is understood to have decided to be “totally open” about her involuntary departure as she worried these people would think she had chosen to walk away.

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