James Harding, the BBC’s director of news and current affairs, has announced he is quitting his job to begin a new journalism venture.
Mr Harding, who is Jewish, had been one of the frontrunners for the next director-general of the corporation.
He is believed to have become frustrated at the constraints imposed by the BBC’s impartiality and pledged that the new media company he intends to set up would have a ”clear point of view”.
He will leave the BBC in January after nearly five years in the £340,000 a year job – having previously become the first Jewish editor of The Times.
