He was subsequently appointed as the BBC's Editor of Newsgathering, before taking a year-long sabbatical to work as a Nieman Fellow in Journalism at Harvard University.
[5] Shortly afterwards, he wrote in a Guardian article that the comments had been meant in the context of "a wider news world in which women have not been well represented in senior positions".
[7] A clandestine visit to North Korea in March 2013 for an edition of Panorama involving the journalist John Sweeney and a group of students from the London School of Economics led to discontent between the BBC and the university with claims that the students lives had been put at risk without their consent.
Thomas described the programme as "an important piece of public interest journalism" and defended putting the students lives at risk.
[10] It was announced in June 2016 that he was leaving the BBC to take up a post as the director of public affairs and communication at Oxford University.