Eddie Mair’s prickliness was unmistakable to listeners of Radio 4’s PM programme yesterday. “In order to compete with commercial broadcasters we provide wine?” he asked, as he queried the thousands spent by the BBC on champagne for its stars.

While a professional interviewer’s job is to put tough questions — in this case to the corporation’s chief operating officer, Caroline Thomson — those who know Mair realise he was summing up the mood within BBC news and current affairs. Referring to a £5 claim by Mark Byford, the Deputy Director-General, for a taxi to go to the World Snooker Championships, Mair said: “Doesn’t he know they are on TV?” Licence fee-payers’ money could have been saved by Mr Byford watching the BBC coverage of the event like any other viewer, he suggested.

Thinly concealed resentment among the corporation’s journalists bubbles over every time details of executive pay and perks are published, highlighting the contrast between the executive bureaucracy and a news and current affairs division that thinks of itself as the conscience of the BBC.

“Every time executive pay is published, the mood ranges from astonishment to sheer outrage, when they see what the bosses are getting,” one radio journalist said.

A list of the top 47 executives paid more than £200,000 showed that the head of marketing earns more than the woman who runs Britain’s most watched televison channel and the head of corporate real estate is on a par with the bosses of Radio 3 and Radio 4.

Sharon Baylay, the BBC director responsible for “marketing, communcations & audiences” is paid between £310,000 and £340,000 a year for running a division with 400 staff. None is involved in making programmes.

That compares with Jay Hunt, who runs BBC One, earning between £250,000 and £280,000, for a high-profile, high-risk job. What causes particular resentment is a belief that busy journalists or producers earn far smaller sums for jobs that require demanding day-to-day decisions, as opposed to poorly understood executive functions.

One staffer said that workers were also “raging” about senior management’s expenses. She said: “There’s been lots of cutbacks on budgets and staff. It seems that they are happy to spend their money on champagne and flights, but not making our product really good.

“They have cut back on wages and the number of people doing news shifts. So this will really rankle; there’s no doubt that people are very angry.”

A producer of shows such as Today or Newsnight will earn between £60,000 and £80,000 a year and reseachers, many of whom are on three-month contracts, start on salaries of £20,000, often for working through-the-night shifts that can last 12 hours at time.

Mark Thompson, the Director-General, talked yesterday about the “often uncomfortable” disclosures about pay and expenses. He will have known, long before Eddie Mair began his interrogation, that the resentment is nowhere stronger than inside the organisation he runs.

Editor's choice

• The 100 Best Films of the Decade
• 70 facts you didn't know about Marvel
• The 50 Biggest Movies Of 2010