David Jordan

David Jordan became the Secretary General of PBI on January 1, 2021, having been a member of its Steering Committee since 2011.

Mr. Jordan became the BBC’s Director, Editorial Policy & Standards, in October 2007. Prior to that, he had been Controller of Editorial Policy since December 2005 and the BBC’s Chief Adviser, Politics, for the two previous years. In all these roles, David Jordan and his team give pre-broadcast advice. He is responsible for producing the BBC’s Editorial Guidelines.

Mr. Jordan became a television journalist on London Weekend Television’s Weekend World in 1984: the program focused on politics and current affairs. He joined the BBC in 1988 to help set up its flagship political program On the Record. He became its Deputy Editor in 1989 and then Deputy Editor of the current affairs flagship Panorama in 1990, where he edited the programs awarded the Royal Television Society’s best domestic documentary two years in a row. He was its acting Editor for nine months before returning to On the Record as its Editor in 1992. He remained in this role until 2003, interrupted only by a period on attachment as the BBC’s Chief Political Adviser. Whilst Editor of On the Record, he founded The Westminster Hour for BBC Radio Four in addition to creating and editing a range of other political programs for BBC television and radio. He later became the Executive Editor of Radio Four’s The Week in Westminster and the World Service’s People and Politics.

As well as his PBI role, David Jordan is a member of the Executive Board of the Organisation of News Ombudsmen and the Board of the International Press Institute, a Board Trustee of the BBC Pension Scheme and a member of the U.K.’s Defence, Security and Media Advisory Committee (DSMA).