A BBC journalist sacked after he refused to publish a report on Prince George’s birth has won a £50,000 payout, Daily Mail reported.
Chandana Keerthi Bandara, 57, lost his job as a producer on a BBC Sri Lankan news service, and sued the corporation for unfair dismissal and race discrimination.
Mr Bandara was in charge of publishing stories on July 23, 2013, the day after Prince George was born.
But he decided not to prioritise the royal birth story, partly, he said, because it was the 30th anniversary of Black July, a brutal period which saw thousands of Tamil people killed in Sri Lanka.
A tribunal heard how Mr Bandara resisted management pressure to cover the story, but eventually relented.
The article was published online at 12.08pm, a tribunal was told.
Mr Bandara had worked for the BBC for 18 years and had been a senior producer on the Sinhala service since 2000.
Despite a clean record, after disciplinary proceedings, Mr Bandara was found to have been guilty of gross misconduct and given a final written warning. He was sacked just over a year later on 15 August 2014 after further allegations against his behaviour were made.
Amongst several other allegations of misconduct, he was accused of making a derogatory reference to a colleague and shouting at others.
-Daily Mail
-Agencies
