‘Ruthlessly impartial’ editor of Panorama and BBC executive who fought for the corporation’s independence during the Thatcher era
Christopher Capron, who has died aged 90, was a well-regarded editor of the BBC’s flagship current affairs programme Panorama, and then the corporation’s head of current affairs, during which time he was a key player in the BBC’s battle for independence in the Thatcher era. He went on to form his own production company, and in 1994 became the first independent to be awarded the contract for the BBC’s Question Time.
As editor of Panorama from 1977 until 1979, he put the emphasis on original, often investigative 50-minute stories from around the world, during a time when money never seemed to be a problem. He ran a team that included the reporters Tom Mangold and Richard Lindley, and his award-winning programmes included a 1978 investigation by Philip Tibenham and Christopher Olgiati into the German rocket company Otrag testing space technology in central Africa, which won the Golden Nymph award at the Monte Carlo television festival, and Who Killed Georgi Markov?, Michael Cockerell and Philip Harding’s 1979 report on the murder of the Bulgarian dissident on British soil that pointed to the Bulgarian secret police and the KGB, which won an Emmy.
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