BBC chiefs have moved to reassure staff and viewers that its flagship current affairs programme Newsnight will not be scrapped in the wake of the departure of presenter Emily Maitlis and others.

       Jonathan Munro, the corporation’s interim director of news and current affairs, is reported to have addressed newsroom staff in a bid to quash rumours about its future.

       His attempts to "reassure the troops" came after the surprise departure of Ms Maitlis, along with her colleague Jon Sopel, the BBC’s former North America editor.

       Their decision to quit the BBC to co-host a show on LBC and present the podcast together for the station’s parent company, Global, led to speculation Newsnight could be axed or moved online.

       Doubts about the show’s future have been aggravated by the decision of co-presenter Emma Barnett to step away from the show. Newsnight is also recruiting for a new editor after Esme Wren left last year to become editor of Channel 4 News.

       'It feels like an unsteady ship'

       Insider comments have included "the floodgates are open and water is pouring out" and "It feels like an unsteady ship".

       But Mr Munro is reported to have told production staff the programme was in "great form" and that rumours of its impending demise were "nonsense".

       A senior journalist said that Newsnight was essential, pointing out that it led on the Ukraine crisis on Monday night after the BBC’s News at Ten preferred to lead with changes to Covid isolation rules.

       "If it didn’t exist it would be necessary to invent it," the journalist told The Times.

       A BBC source said any speculation about Newsnight being scrapped was “false”.

       Ms Maitlis has repeatedly fallen foul of the corporation’s impartiality rules and is understood to have grown increasingly frustrated with the constraints of BBC guidelines over the past two years.

       She has been the subject of several impartiality rows, notably in 2020 when she delivered a Newsnight monologue about Dominic Cummings’ Barnard Castle trip in which she stated: "Dominic Cummings broke the rules. The country can see that and it’s shocked the Government cannot."

       The facts were disputed at the time, and the BBC said the programme had fallen short of required standards.

       Ms Maitlis later earned another rebuke from management when she told Press Gazette that the BBC had caved in to pressure from Number 10.

       She was also rebuked this month after sharing a post from Rory Stewart, the former international development secretary, in which he criticised what he said was the Conservative embrace of Trump-style rhetoric.

       A BBC source said any speculation about Newsnight being scrapped was "false".