Prof. Stewart Purvis

Professor of Television Journalism

Stewart Purvis

Stewart Purvis began his broadcasting career at the BBC and then moved to ITN where he rose to become Editor-in-Chief and then Chief Executive from 1995-2003. During his time as Editor of Channel Four News in the early eighties he won two British Academy Awards and is often credited with having turned the programme into the success it has become.

Stewart is currently Partner for Content & Standard at Ofcom. He is responsible for the implementation of the Ofcom Broadcast Code and the qualitative regulation of public service content across television and radio and also for the emerging issues around media literacy and the relationship between broadcast regulation and the on-line world.

He is a member of the Ofcom Content Board and the Radio Licensing Committee. He is also on the Executive Board of UKCCIS (UK Council for Child Internet Safety) and chairs the Digital Britain Media Literacy Working Group.

In 2003 he was made the first Chair of Television Journalism in the Department of Journalism at City University, London. Mr Purvis was also News International Visiting Professor of Broadcast Media at Oxford University in 2005.

He was a regular newspaper columnist and broadcaster and a consultant to broadcasters. In 2000 he received a CBE for services to broadcast journalism. In 2005 he was made an Honorary Doctor of Law by Exeter University. In February 2009 he received the Royal Television Society’s Gold Medal for an outstanding contribution to television.