👉 BBC Today programme presenter Amol Rajan said that 70% of newsreaders across the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Sky News speak with ‘posh’ Received Pronunciation
said research initiated by the BBC News department found that “70 per cent of newsreaders across the four main broadcasters speak with RP, the poshest accent, compared with 10 per cent of population” who speak with that voice.Once regarded as the most “typically British” accent, it is now spoken by just two per cent of the population, according to recent figures.
Addressing Davie at the Royal Television Society conference, Rajan asked his boss when he was going to put more diverse voices on air. He asked Davie whether he would employ a newsreaders with a “strong regional working class accent”. That would would be a step forward, he suggested., who was raised in Tooting, south London, considers his own “classless” accent to be multicultural London English. He did not name anyone at the BBC he considers to have an RP accent.
The director-general could have pointed to news presenters whose voices represent the nations of Britain – such as Bridgend’s Huw Edwards and Dumfries’s Kirsty Wark. Once people adopted RP, associated with power, privilege and a public school education, as a sign of social mobility.