Lord Hall, the director general of the BBC, has insisted that the corporation is not “in opposition” to local journalism.
Hall was delivering the inaugural Satchwell Lecture in honour of Bob Satchwell, the former Society of Editors executive director who was forced to retire last year due to ill health.
The BBC has been criticised for taking a more localised approach to its online operation, thereby impacting on the territory traditionally covered by local news titles.
But Lord Hall pointed to its efforts to “support a healthy local media ecology” through the Local News Partnership scheme and its Shared Data Unit at BBC Birmingham.
He said: “I recognise that commercial pressures on newspapers have never been so tough. Titles have merged or folded right across the country in recent years, or they’ve had to cut back on editorial content to make ends meet.
