Catherine Hunt

Why organisations work with Catherine Hunt

• She has sat in the editor’s chair at the BBC’s flagship evening news, deciding what leads, what gets cut, and how a story is framed for millions of viewers. Few communications advisors have made those calls in real time.
• Her training is editorial, not presentational. She works on what a leader is actually saying and in what order, before any work on delivery, which is where most media coaching starts.
• She has worked across local press, national newspapers, the Press Association, and BBC television, which means she knows how the same story moves and mutates across formats.
• She runs CHC Media as a working consultancy, so her advice draws on current client engagements rather than archived BBC experience.

Biography highlights

• Editor of the BBC Six O’Clock News, the corporation’s main early-evening television bulletin.
• Edited live BBC coverage of major domestic and international news events.
• Reporter for the Press Association and the Daily Mail before joining the BBC.
• Began in regional journalism at the Evening Argus in Brighton.
• Founder of CHC Media, a communications consultancy advising private and public sector clients.
• Author of the psychological thriller “Someone Out There,” set in Brighton.

Biography

The work of editing a national news bulletin is the work of deciding what matters in the next thirty minutes. Catherine Hunt did that for the BBC Six O’Clock News, one of the UK’s most-watched television programmes, choosing which stories led, which were cut for time, and how complex events were translated for a general audience. That seat carries an editorial discipline that very few communications professionals have ever held.

Hunt came to the BBC after a career in print. She started at the Evening Argus in Brighton, then reported for the Press Association and the Daily Mail before moving into broadcast as a producer. Across those roles, she learned how the same fact reads differently in a wire copy line, a tabloid lead, and a televised top story. That cross-format fluency now sits underneath her advisory work.

Through her consultancy CHC Media, Hunt advises private and public sector clients on the same questions she handled in the gallery: what is the story, who is it for, and what is the cleanest way to land it. The practical content is editorial first, presentational second. Leaders work on the structure and ordering of what they want to say before anything is done about how they say it.

Her work suits the senior client who has to communicate something difficult and knows that the words will be recorded, clipped, and replayed. She wrote a psychological thriller in 2015, “Someone Out There,” set in Brighton, which she covered as a young reporter, which sits alongside her advisory practice as evidence of a lifetime spent on how stories are built.

Key speaking topics

• Media interviews and high-stakes communication
• Newsroom decision-making and editorial judgement
• Message structure and prioritisation for senior leaders
• Crisis communications and breaking-news coverage
• Storytelling for public and private sector audiences
• The journalist’s view of corporate communications

Ideal for

• Executive teams preparing for media interviews, regulator hearings, or analyst calls
• Communications and public affairs leads building internal media-skills programmes
• Boards and senior leaders rehearsing crisis statements and town halls
• Conference organisers needing an experienced moderator or panel chair with a journalist’s instinct

Audience outcomes

• A clearer view of how a national newsroom would treat their story, and what that means for what to say first
• A sharper sense of which message belongs at the top of a statement, and which sits below the line
• Practical instincts for handling difficult interviews, hostile questions, and breaking news pressure
• Confidence in editing their own communications down to what actually matters