The entire broadcasting industry needs to look at its diversity practices in the wake of presenter Miriam O’Reilly winning her age discrimination case against the BBC, the corporation has said.
 

O’Reilly, who is aged 53, took the broadcaster to an employment tribunal for age and sex discrimination when she, along with three other female presenters all in their 40s and 50s were dropped from the 23 year old Countryfile programme on BBC1.
 
The tribunal upheld her claim for age but not sexual discrimination and ruled that she had been victimised by the corporation. O’Reilly claimed she was hounded out of the BBC after she was unfairly blamed for newspaper stories that criticised the organisation for dropping middle-aged female presenters.
 
The presenter, who is now eligible for damages, told the Guardian: “Words cannot describe how happy I feel. It’s historic and it’s going to have huge implications for all broadcasters.”
 
The BBC agreed. It said in a statement that the findings raised questions that “need to be addressed by the whole industry. As chair of the Cultural Diversity Network, Mark Thompson will raise the topic of fair representation of people of all ages across the broadcasting industry”.
 
The corporation also said that it accepted the findings of the tribunal and would like to apologise to O’Reilly, who it would be “speaking to” about further employment in future. It added that it was “committed to fair selection in every aspect of our work” and “clearly did not get it right in this case”.
 
But the organisation also said that it planned to give additional training to senior editorial executives on the selection and appointment of presenters and issue new guidance on fair selection.