THE BBC is facing a fresh threat of industrial action after announcing plans to axe 415 posts to save £48 million a year.
The cuts will be offset by around 195 new roles, meaning a net reduction of 220 jobs altogether by 2016/17.
James Harding, the BBC's director of news and current affairs, gave details of the cuts to a staff meeting in London.
He said: "Taking nearly £50 million out of a well-run organisation that provides high quality news services that are trusted, relied upon and used by millions of people is an extremely difficult undertaking.
"The challenge is how to make BBC News even better, despite having less money."
The body is already facing strike action in Scotland on the opening day of the Commonwealth Games.
Michelle Stanistreet, general secretary of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ), attacked the latest announcement.
She said: "They plan to get rid of hundreds of staff using licence fee payers' money to cover the redundancy pay-outs and then immediately hire in a load more. You couldn't make it up."
Gerry Morrissey, general secretary of the technicians' union Bectu, said he understood the posts would go before any of the new jobs were filled.
He warned of industrial action if the BBC went ahead with cutting the jobs first.
Mr Harding said: "We are living through a period of extraordinary change in news media.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article