Phil Harding (BBC executive)

Phil Harding is a journalist and media consultant. He is a Fellow of the Society of Editors and a trustee of the Press Association. He is a former editor and executive at the BBC where he held a variety of senior editorial jobs. He was Director English Networks & News at the BBC World Service between 2001 and 2007. He joined the BBC in 1969 and worked as a producer on a number of television current affairs programmes. He was deputy editor of Panorama and Nationwide. At Panorama he won an Emmy for his programme on the assassination of the Bulgarian exile Georgi Markov. He was Editor of BBC Radio 4's "Today" programme between 1987 and 1993. During that time the programme won five Sony Gold awards. After that he headed the project which led to the founding of Radio Five Live and became the networks' first Editor of News Programmes. In 1996 he became Chief Political Adviser for the BBC and in 1997 Controller of Editorial Policy at the BBC, where he was responsible for the editorial and ethical standards of all the BBC's output and wrote the BBC's Editorial Guidelines.