“Television Is a Chain and Every Link Matters”- Inside the World of ITV Deputy Editor Oruj Defoite

In the basement of ITN’s bustling London headquarters the gallery hums and producers hurridly dart between floors. They know, they all know breaking news can rewrite the entire programme in seconds. Deputy editor of Good Morning Britain, Oruj Defoite, is conducting the newsroom like a perfect orchestra. Dozens of instruments, one live performance, no second takes. “We’ve done our four‑hour programmes all of last week, this is our seventh four‑hour programme,” she tells me, half‑laughing at the sheer pace of it all. “Four hours of live TV is a lot of work.”Yet beneath the pressure sits a calm, meticulous leader who has spent three decades shaping her career and effortlessly inserting herself into British journalism from local papers in South Wales to the BBC, Channel 4 News, and now ITV’s flagship morning show.

Oruj Defoite

However, January marked a seismic shift for the Good Morning Britain team, moving their entire operation from ITV to ITN (the home to ITV News, Channel 4 News and Channel 5 News). The change has been exhilirating but very exhausting. “There’s a lot of moving parts and a lot of our teams have had to learn new ways of doing things,” she explains “How you book a line, how you set up sound, how you film things everything is different here.” The physical layout of the building is completely different which has become Orujs’ logistical puzzle to solve. The newsroom on one floor, the studio and gallery in the basement, graphics on another. She tells me the key to this change is communication.

“Communication is everything”

“We’ve got talkback boxes, portable devices, apps where you can hear open talkback from the gallery getting all that set up has taken a lot of work before we can even start putting a programme together.” However its all worth it as the payoff is huge, ITN’s integrated systems of writing, finding and submitting news have transformed how the team collaborates, not only in the London office but across the network.“It’s totally about sharing,” she says “We can see what ITV News is doing in Manchester, Bournemouth, South Wales, it stops us doubling up and opens up this massive pool of expertise.”

Oruj’s path into journalism is the kind of story that feels cinematic, it showed key themes of determination, human feelings and highted what true passion for an industry can do. She began in the early 90s at the Gwent Gazette, a small local paper in a quiet town in South Wales. She walked in, head held high and asked for work, offering her time for free. “The editor took me under his wing I cut my teeth on little nibs and picture stories even giant vegetable competitions which of course I had to write captions for them!”

Oruj has accomplished what many aspiring journalists can only dream of but despite her senior editorial role, she still lights up when talking about interviewing. She admires journalists like Mishal Husain and “the gentle way she probes, but you know it’s actually quite tough” and the effortless way Matt Frei “makes poetry out of pictures”. When asking Oruj about her own style she reflected and said “I don’t do the ‘gotcha’ interviews, you must understand your subject deeply, and you must understand your audience.”

As you can imagine live television is famously stressful but Oruj has developed a philosophy that keeps her steady.“I never raise my voice, never forget my manners and never assume anything,” she says. “Successes belong to everyone else so do mistakes.” This is a leadership style rooted In empathy and experience instead of ego. This is driven by her belief that journalism is a privilege, audiences deserve respect. “The best stories come from listening, not performing”.

Oruj Defoite’s approach as deputy editor feels refreshingly human in a media landscape that is often obsessed with speed, spectacle and it is that personality and love for giving a voice to those who need it which has allowed her career to grow with unstoppable momentum. But she will always believe television may be a chain but every link matters and it’s leaders like her that that hold those links together.

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