Early BBC Career
In 1979 she won a place on the BBC News trainee scheme, and began her first period of employment with the corporation working on radio and television news; BBC Newcastle's Look North and Radio Sheffield. She worked on Nationwide, The Money Programme and Newsnight. Whilst working on Newsnight during the Falklands War she produced many of Peter Snow’s reports illustrating military clashes between the British and Argentine forces using a sand-box. These included his broadcast on 2nd May 1982 in which he referred to the unreliability of information provided by the Argentine regime of the day. He then struck a sceptical note about a report from the Ministry of Defence. Snow’s choice of words was raised in the House of Commons at Prime Minister’s Questions and a few days later prompted a leader column in the Sun newspaper saying “there are traitors in our midst”. The BBC Chairman, George Howard went on the record to defend the BBC's "reputation for telling the truth".
She became an award-winning producer of Panorama in 1986, and co-authored The Disappeared: Voices from a Secret War with the BBC's diplomatic editor John Simpson about the actions of Argentina's military government in the same year.
In 1990 she became editor of the BBC’s flagship science programme Horizon. Awards she won during this period included the 1991 News and Documentary Emmy for her role as Executive Producer of the film “Suicide Mission to Chernobyl” which also aired on the WGBH program Nova in the United States.
In 1994 she was appointed the BBC's Head of Science, the first woman to take that role. Under her leadership the department expanded the range and ambition of its programming, winning awards for series such as Walking With Dinosaurs, The Human Body and Meet The Ancestors and business formats such as Blood on the Carpet, Back to the Floor and the medical format Trust Me, I’m a Doctor. She introduced a new animal genre to UK television with the highly successful and long-running Animal Hospital, alongside live events such as Hospitalwatch. The science department also pioneered content rich web sites and was one of the first areas to use email inside the BBC.
She joined the BBC's Board of Management in 1997 as Director of Production, then became Director of Programmes for the former BBC Production division until she left the BBC to join Discovery Communications as General Manager of the TLC channel in August 1999.
In 2000 she was awarded an OBE in 2000 for her work in science broadcasting.
Read more about this topic: Jana Bennett
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