James Paul Harding (born 15 September 1969) is a British journalist, and a former director of BBC News who was in the post from August 2013 until 1 January 2018.

[16] With a reportedly unsustainable editorial budget, voluntary and compulsory redundancies were announced in June 2010, along the introduction of charges for readers for the digital edition.

And, of course, Rupert Murdoch is pro-Israel.” We wrote an editorial called 'In defence of Israel' during the Gaza offensive, but we also reported on the use of white phosphorus, which was the Israelis breaking their own rules.

"[19] During his oral submission at the Leveson Inquiry on 7 February 2012, Harding apologised for the withholding of information from the High Court, without his knowledge, that Patrick Foster,[20] then a reporter on his newspaper, in 2009 had hacked into the blogger NightJack's email account in order to identify him.

[21] He asserted that Alastair Brett, then legal manager at The Times, had kept knowledge about the hacking from him when the newspaper had successfully appealed against an injunction application in the High Court preventing publication and preserving Horton's privacy.

"[13] Harding also wrote: "The failure of News International to get to grips with what had happened at one of its newspapers suggested that the company had succumbed to that most dangerous delusion of the powerful, namely that it could play by its own set of rules.

[31] In November 2017, Lord Puttnam, in evidence to the Competition and Markets Authority over Fox's bid to wholly own Sky, said Harding had been removed because The Times had backed President Obama in the 2012 presidential election.

[32] On 16 April 2013 his appointment as the new head of BBC News was announced, a post formerly held by Helen Boaden,[33][34] although he did not formally take up the role until August 2014.

[35] In his first speech to staff on 4 December 2014,[36] Harding affirmed that the BBC should not avoid investigative journalism after controversies of previous years.