Kirsty Wark was told about Bafta fellowship on 70th birthday

Former Newsnight presenter Kirsty Wark has said it was “the icing on the cake” to discover on her 70th birthday that she is to be honoured with a Bafta fellowship.

The Scottish TV presenter and journalist, who celebrated the milestone birthday on February 3, will receive Bafta’s highest accolade at its annual TV awards.

She told the PA news agency: “It was quite a long birthday, actually, there’s lots of things that go on (during) a birthday.

“But to get that email was tremendous. And I think it just added, literally, the icing on the cake.

“So we were at home, we were doing different things. We were going to, sort of, my favourite place to go in Scotland, Arran.

“We were doing all sorts of things and then that just came in. I just thought, that’s extraordinary. I can’t believe it.”

Wark, who is being honoured for her exceptional contribution to television, has interviewed a variety of prominent politicians and cultural figures including former prime minister Margaret Thatcher, Australian author Germaine Greer, Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker and The Libertines’ Pete Doherty.

She joined the BBC current affairs programme Newsnight in 1993 as a presenter and left in July 2024 after more than 30 years at the helm.

Newsnight was reduced to a half-hour programme last year amid wider plans by the BBC to make £500 million of savings.

Wark said it is “critical” to still have the show in a “very precarious time”.

She told PA: “I want people to turn on Newsnight at the end of the day, and Victoria (Derbyshire) and the others are just making sense of what happened during the day.

“And I think the thing is that, it may only be half an hour, but we can still get top-notch guests, and that’s critical.”

Speaking about the threats facing journalists, she added: “I think the rise of misinformation is incredibly problematic, and I don’t think we all have the tools to help us decide what’s truth and what’s fake.

“And also with the rise of AI, what are we actually getting here?

“I think that’s where the BBC and, to be honest, ITN, Channel 4, comes into its own.

“Because you want trained journalists who you can trust to give you what is the truth.

“And you only do that by having people out in the field telling you the stories as they happen that you can trust, double source things, all those things still really, really matter, and matter even more as there are so many players in the field who are not making those judgment calls, who are wading in, and I think its incumbent on the BBC to be super, hyper vigilant.”

Reflecting on her decision to leave Newsnight, she added: “I knew because I’ve been doing it for a very long time, and I do believe in a pipeline.

“I wasn’t going to sit there for another 10 years. It was my choice to go.

“They didn’t really want me to go, but I said I wanted to go because I thought I’d done it for long enough, and I would leave at the election. And that’s indeed what happened.”

Wark has fronted documentaries on social media and taboos surrounding the menopause, and has also explored the stories of some of Scotland’s most influential female pioneers in BBC series The Women Who Changed Modern Scotland.

She currently presents on radio programmes The Reunion and Front Row on BBC Radio Four.

She has won several industry awards including the British Academy Scotland Awards 2013 special achievement gong for outstanding contribution to broadcasting.

Previous recipients of the Bafta fellowship include Baroness Floella Benjamin, actress Meera Syal and comedians Sir Billy Connolly and Dawn French.

The fellowship will be presented to Wark during the Bafta Television Awards on Sunday May 11 at the Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall.