Last Wednesday Mark Thompson visited the University of Kent to deliver a lecture at the Centre for Journalism’s inaugural Bob Friend Memorial Scholarship event.
You can view the CfJ’s coverage on our website.
And you can read my piece on Journalism.co.uk too.
If you scroll to the end of the Cover It Live section you’ll find Ian Reeves’ question unanswered. Seeing as the CfJ itself hasn’t actually enlightened you on Thompson’s answer – I will. However, someone seems to have taken my notebook, thus it will be from my rusty old memory.
Thompson started by posing the rhetorical question of whether or not BBC executives should expect to get a smaller salary than commercial equivalents.
He then went on to explain that they apply a 50-80% discount to the corporation’s executive salaries.
So let’s do the math:
Mark Thompson’s current salary = £834,000
If this was a 50% discount, Mark Thompson believes he should actually be on:
£1,668,000
80% discount:
£4,170,000
Now for a summary:
Mark Thompson thinks his salary should really be somewhere in between £1,668,000-£4,170,000.
Shocking. I could pay my monthly rent somewhere between 4830-12087 times with that salary.