I want to clear up some erroneous elements of these stories as I think they have portrayed BBC employees in an unfair light. Before doing so however let me provide a bit of background.

Earlier this year, we announced a pay increase of 1% for staff in 2012. We did this based on what we could afford. We're conscious that our people have had below inflation pay rises or, in some cases, a complete pay freeze for the last three years. And during this period, like many others outside the BBC, they have seen their pay fall in real terms. We are also currently in the process of trying to deliver savings of £700m a year by 2016/17 as part of the Delivering Quality First efficiencies programme. Given these challenges we made a tough judgement on the amount by which we could afford to raise pay.

Feedback from our staff on the pay rise has been mixed. Some staff are not happy with the offer but others tell us that whilst they would obviously have preferred to have had a pay rise that matched the rise in the cost of living they understand our financial position.

We know that we're not alone in this situation. Many licence fee payers have seen their own pay frozen. In the public sector for example there is a two year Government cap on public pay of 1%. Local Government workers are due to enter their third consecutive year of pay freezes. Against this backdrop the joint union's demands of a pay rise for staff amounting to nearly 6% looks unrealistic.

And this is the point. In some of today's press BBC staff were described as 'militant', 'unpatriotic' and 'greedy'. The suggestion is that they are threatening to 'wreck the Queen's Jubilee celebrations' in order to get more money. This is not the case. No decision has yet been taken on whether or not there will be a strike and we remain hopeful that staff will vote against such a course of action.

We have made clear to the unions that even if they do take industrial action it won't change what we can afford. What it could do however is damage our relationship with licence fee payers and that is the last thing we want.

Everyone I speak to at the BBC is excited at the prospect of working on some of the biggest events this country has ever seen. They are proud that they will be bringing the Diamond Jubilee, the Olympics and Euro 2012 to audiences of millions around the country and I don't believe anyone at the BBC wants to see this coverage jeopardised.

First of all, who are we talking about here? It is the nine Executive Board directors and 634 senior managers who are employed in the BBC's public service operations, and so whose salaries are paid for out of the licence fee. The supposed "missing" managers Elstein refers to are those who are not funded by the licence fee at all, but whose costs are met entirely by the BBC's commercial operations - not just BBC Worldwide, but also at BBC Studios and Post Production.

Next, how will cutting 114 jobs from this total save £20m? The answer is that it won't. Cutting the total number of senior managers was only one part of our proposal. The £20m being saved is from the BBC's total senior managers' pay bill, not managers' basic salaries alone. Alongside the reduction in the total number of managers - a large proportion of which will of course be achieved through natural churn, retirements and the conclusion of major projects such as managing the transition to Salford - we are also freezing bonuses for between two and four years at least, depending on grade. Where we do recruit replacements for senior managers who leave, which will only be after a stringent review of the post, it will be at a substantially lower salary as we reflect the realities of the current economic climate.

David Elstein concludes that "no one currently employed takes a cut at all". In fact, senior managers will earn 11-14.5% less in real terms by August 2013 than they did last year. Last week's report showed the BBC is already paying between 25% and 65% less than our commercial equivalents. In future we anticipate this could be up to 80% less.

We believe this is an achievable way of delivering greater value for money for the licence fee payer - whilst still providing the type of outstanding public service broadcasting the BBC is renowned for across the world.

(Lucy Adams is Director of BBC People. This post is a transcript of a response sent to today's Guardian)