Most news organisations do proactive journalism as well as reactive journalism and the BBC has to be in that game as well.”He accepts that the spectre of Andrew Gilligan and Lord Hutton may have created an impediment in journalists’ minds He plans to banish it. For the uninitiated, the momentum behind digital television has come from its ability to pack a bigger consumer punch. It contained strong intelligence information that Siddique Khan was on the security services’ radar But that was not properly followed through. “Given that people pay a large part of their licence fee for a news service, and news is by definition about new information, that should not be information from wires or agency video.

Invariably, if that sort of reporting is done well, it means that people in powerful positions don’t like it.”
He is unambiguous about his appetite for exclusives. He has never ventured outside and colleagues say he is so attuned to corporate orthodoxy that his opinions reflect the BBC’s collective mood. If so, the corporation is enjoying a spectacular upturn in confidence that may banish memories of Lord Hutton as well as launching a new era of investigative journalism. In the atmosphere of self-flagellation that swept the BBC after Greg Dyke’s resignation, Mark Byford, the acting director-general, declared: “The notion of exclusive here, exclusive there, exclusive everywhere is not appropriate for the BBC … what people really come to the BBC for is trust and reliability.” Peter Horrocks strikes a different tone. “Professionally the thing I take most pride in is standing up for my journalists and enabling them to do their jobs and if necessary to cause trouble.

For a higher premium, you can get discounted telephone calls and broadband too.. Since Peter Horrocks was appointed head of BBC Television News in September his admirers have voiced one fond criticism. Horrocks is a BBC lifer, who joined straight after graduating from Cambridge in 1981. It also offers a personal video recorder (Sky+) for an £89 fee, which records and stores around 40 hours of digital TV.If you’re in an area served by cable companies, digital deals are available from newly merged NTL/ Telewest (covering roughly 55 per cent of the UK); the monthly fee is £5.50, with a £25 installation for the set-top box (see table).The cost of the set-top box is included as part of the deal. But if you’re prepared to spend more – up to £120 – it offers special set-top boxes in which you insert a card to watch extra channels.