Farewell to departing editor Ben de Pear

We don’t often spend time recognising the off-screen team,- who are really the ones who make this programme what it is.

So we wanted to take a moment to mention our departing editor Ben de Pear, who has led the programme for the last decade.

Under Ben’s editorship, Channel 4 News has won more awards than at any time in its history.

Baftas and Royal Television Society awards in this country have been accompanied by awards at Cannes, International Emmys in the United States, and even an Oscar nomination.

That reflected Ben’s determination to dedicate a huge amount of time to foreign news, especially the impact of war on civilians in Syria, human rights abuses in Sri Lanka, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

He’s also behind Channel 4 News’ expose of the British political consultants Cambridge Analytica, the use of Facebook data to manipulate elections around the world, and our shift to presenting the news live from around the UK.

Ben’s been an inspiring journalist to work for and we just wanted to publicly wish him all the best and to say thank you.

We ambushed him with cake and had a work meeting afterwards.