BBC World Service needs more funds to compete with RT - former chief

[Loki]

BBC World Service needs more funds to compete with RT - former chief



The BBC World Service is “financially outgunned” and losing ground to Russia’s RT, warns the service’s ex-chief. The UK and US may be ceding their dominant position to the “Kremlin propaganda” mouthpiece with a global audience of 700 million, he said.

Peter Horrocks, who stepped down as the top executive of the BBC global news operations earlier this month, told the Guardian that Britain should consider allocating extra funding to counter the growing influence of Russia’s global TV news channel RT.

“Medium- to long-term there has to be an anxiety about the spending of others compared to what the BBC are putting into it,” Horrocks said. “You can take a view of the overall national interest and things we spend on international influence, like military spending. When you look at that it would take it in a certain direction.”

Outgunned & outspent

If Britain wants to combat Moscow’s growing influence in global information, the country’s ministers had better consider additional funding for the BBC World Service, Horrocks said, revealing that the BBC has already questioned the Foreign Office on “whether there’s anything they want to do with development funding for extra programming for Ukraine.” No reply has been received so far.

The BBC’s future is dependent on supplementary funding if UK authorities want to maintain the World Service as Britain’s major influence overseas, insists the former BBC boss.

“We are being financially outgunned by Russia and the Chinese, but there’s no way we’re being outgunned on the results [global audience]. The role we need to play is an even-handed one. We shouldn’t be pro one side or the other. We need to provide something people can trust,” Horrocks said.

“It is frightening the extent to which we are losing the information war,” the Guardian quoted John Whittingdale, chair of the Commons Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, as saying.

“On a global scale the BBC are concerned because they are being outspent by the Russians and Chinese on a spectacular scale,” said a former ITN CEO, Professor Stewart Purvis. “It’s the soft power war that’s replaced the Cold War. The Russian and Chinese channels are clearly proxies for their governments and Britain is being vastly outspent,” he said.
Rise of RT

RT currently broadcasts in English, Spanish, Arabic and Russian, with plans to launch French and German channels in 2015.

The BBC World Service, a leading international radio and internet broadcaster providing programmes and content in English and 27 other languages, has a budget of £245 million ($382 million) that is funded from UK TV license fees. RT, with its 24-hour TV and internet coverage in English, Spanish, Arabic and Russian, plus French and German services ready to be rolled out in 2015, will reportedly have a combined budget of 15.38 billion rubles ($271 million as at December 22, 2014) for 2015.



The BBC World Service has showed good results recently with a record 265 million viewers a week, despite certain service closures and cuts since 2010. RT is available around the clock to 700 million viewers in more than 100 countries around the globe.

“Russia Today’s expansion is part of a big investment in soft power,” said Richard Sambrook, director of the Cardiff School of Journalism, and a former head of BBC Global News. Yet while the World Service had “a fraction of the budget” of Chinese and Russian state-run media outlets, it nevertheless remains influential in world news, he claimed.

Ukraine crisis coverage alarmed Europe

The political crisis in Ukraine, which turned into a fully-fledged civil war in 2014, made European politicians ring alarm bells over the news presented by 24-hour RT news channel broadcasting from Moscow.

Unlike EU broadcasters, RT has also been showing the other side of the coin of the Ukrainian unrest: eastern provinces of Ukraine devastated by Kiev troops, neo-Nazi militants ravaging the rebellious Donetsk and Lugansk Regions, an unprecedented number of civilian victims caused by the so-called ‘anti-terrorist’ punitive operation initiated by the Kiev authorities.

After the issue was raised by leaders in the Baltic States at the G20 summit in Australia, British Prime Minister David Cameron expressed to US President Barack Obama his concerns about Russian news channels “pumping out a distorted picture” of events in Ukraine.

In November, RT UK was threatened with “statutory sanctions” for allegedly breaching the UK's broadcasting code.

UK media watchdog Ofcom threatened RT after it ruled that the TV channel had “failed to preserve due impartiality” in four of its news bulletins aired in March this year and covering events in Ukraine.

RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan responded to the ruling by saying: “We accept the decision of Ofcom… We look forward to Ofcom applying today's ruling impartially to all broadcasters reporting on any government, irrespective of its political leaning."

[Loki]

From The Guardian:


BBC World Service fears losing information war as Russia Today ramps up pressure

Former director calls for more cash to fight propaganda saying BBC is being outgunned by Kremlin-backed news channel



The BBC World Service is being financially outgunned by Russian and Chinese state-owned news channels, its former director Peter Horrocks has warned, amid high-level concerns that Britain and the US are losing a global “information war” with the Kremlin.

Horrocks said ministers should review Britain’s spending overseas and consider freeing up extra World Service funding to combat the wave of Moscow-backed propaganda sweeping Europe.

“Medium to long term there has to be an anxiety about the spending of others compared to what the BBC are putting into it,” Horrocks said. “You can take a view of the overall national interest and things we spend on international influence, like military spending. When you look at that it would take it in a certain direction.”

International alarm over the rise of Kremlin-funded news, led by 24-hour news channel Russia Today, has intensified following Vladimir Putin’s military intervention in Ukraine and his feud with the west.

David Cameron told MPs he had raised with President Obama his concern about Russian news channels “pumping out a distorted picture” of events in Ukraine after the issue was raised by leaders in the Baltic states at the G20 summit in Australia.

Horrocks, who stepped down earlier this month as the executive in charge of the BBC’s global news operations, said the corporation had asked the Foreign Office (FCO) “whether there’s anything they want to do with development funding for extra programming for Ukraine” but he had not yet had a reply.

FCO funding for the World Service stopped in April, with the £245m annual budget now coming out of the licence fee. Despite this shift, Horrocks said “considering supplementary funding [from the FCO] is something that could be on the policy agenda and could be part of the discussion about the BBC’s future”.

He added: “We are being financially outgunned by Russia and the Chinese but there’s no way we’re being outgunned on the results [global audience]. The role we need to play is an even handed one. We shouldn’t be pro-one side or the other, we need to provide something people can trust.”

Demand for BBC World Service output has soared since the Ukraine-Russia crisis began. The corporation’s Russian-language service has more than doubled to 6.9 million listeners, while in Ukraine its audience has trebled to more than 600,000 since last year.

Globally the BBC’s news operation appears to be healthy – reaching a record 265 million people a week, including the World Service’s 191.4 million audience – in spite of a raft of service closures and cuts since 2010.

As the World Service has pared back, Russia Today has expanded spectacularly. The network, which broadcasts a pro-Kremlin interpretation of world events in English, Spanish, Arabic and Russian, launched a UK-focused channel based in Millbank, central London, recently and plans to launch German and French channels next year.

Putin will next year increase its global budget by 40% to 15.38bn rubles (£220m), up from 11.87bn rubles this year. The channel boasts of a worldwide reach of 700 million – while never disclosing the actual size of its audience – after expanding its Spanish service across South America.

At the same time, state funding has been ramped up for Rossiya Segodnya, a global news agency built on the remains of the liquidated RIA Novosti. Earlier this month Rossiya Segodnya launched Sputnik, an English-language online and radio service to replace Voice of Russia. Its TV news anchor is Dmitry Kiselev, described as Russia’s chief propagandist with a record of attacking homosexuals, who said the project was aimed at a global audience “tired of aggressive propaganda promoting a unipolar world and who want a different perspective”.

John Whittingdale, chair of the Commons culture, media and sport select committee, said: ” We are being outgunned massively by the Russians and Chinese and that’s something I’ve raised with the BBC. It is frightening the extent to which we are losing the information war.”

Whittingdale said he would seek assurances from BBC News director James Harding about protecting the World Service as a counterweight to Russia Today. “The clear commitment that has been given by Russia and China [to expand state-run news channels in Europe] strengthens the case why we should be backing the World Service,” he said.

Senior BBC executives say privately that the World Service gives the corporation a strong card to play in the upcoming royal charter renewal talks. They sense growing unease among Tory MPs about the future of the licence fee, but know that many of them are passionate supporters of the World Service as a measure of Britain’s influence overseas.

“On a global scale the BBC are concerned because they are being outspent by the Russians and Chinese on a spectacular scale,” said Professor Stewart Purvis, the former ITN chief executive. “It’s the soft power war that’s replaced the cold war. The Russian and Chinese channels are clearly proxies for their governments and Britain is being vastly outspent.”

Sir Tony Brenton, Britain’s former ambassador to Moscow, said the boom in pro-Kremlin propaganda in Europe reflected the insecure mindset of the Russian government. While he did not see the rise of Russia Today as a threat, Brenton warned that any further cuts to the World Service would harm Britain’s influence on the global stage. “If you want a world that is just, you need a world where facts are given the maximum possible currency,” he said. “If I had money to spend on boosting Britain’s influence around the world then the World Service is one of the first places I would put it.”

Richard Sambrook, the director of Cardiff school of journalism and former head of BBC global news, said the World Service had “a fraction of the budget” of Chinese and Russian state-run outlets but nevertheless remains influential in world news. “Russia Today’s expansion is part of a big investment in soft power. A lot of the eastern states have made bit investments in international broadcasting and that’s their attempt to influence western audiences in the same way the BBC have in the past tried to do that,” he said. “What they’re saying is they are offering a different perspective – the problem is that’s quite often fictional.”

Last month Russia Today’s UK channel was threatened with statutory sanctions by Ofcom after breaching the broadcasting code on due impartiality over its coverage of the Ukraine crisis. The channel was censured over four reports, including one featuring a pundit, Mark Sleboda, who described the Kiev regime as a “putsch government” that came to power with the help of violent mobs which included “a number of extremists”.

It is the 10th breach of Ofcom’s code in nine years and there are six investigations ongoing, but some close to the regulator believe Russia Today is spoiling for a fight and would relish being fined or even taken off air by the UK. “Ofcom is right to investigate and impose penalties if breaches have occured,” said Whittingdale. “Where we need to be careful is not to give a propaganda weapon to the Russians. There is nothing Russia would like more than to be able to say the west is censoring us.”

In London, Russia Today has been on a 12-month recruitment drive in preparation for its UK launch. Many who apply for jobs there are young, enthusiastic journalists lured by the prospect of apparently limitless resources. Sara Firth, a former London-based correspondent who resigned in July in protest at its coverage of the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, said presenters’ salaries were “astronomical” and the average monthly take home pay for middle-ranking staff was around £4,300 after tax. In December, all London staff are rewarded with double pay in an initiative known internally as “the 13th month”. “There’s money everywhere,” Firth said. “It’s not the nice side of things but the reason people stay so long is that the money is limitless. It’s frustrating because it’s a huge organisation with all those resources and all this money and all those people who want to do great stories [but], when it comes down to it, the heart of Russia Today is not journalism, it’s the propaganda.”

Firth said there were daily internal battles in London about what could be aired, with routine material like pitches and scripts having to be signed off by top-level officials in Moscow. “I wouldn’t consider myself a propagandist but at the end of it the reality was that I was working for Putin. I was being used as a tool and that was to get out the Kremlin line.”

American anchor Liz Wahl, whose on-air resignation as Russia Today’s Washington correspondent in March has been viewed millions of times on YouTube, said executives conceded that it would never have a following to match CNN or Fox News, but that “it doesn’t necessarily matter how many people are watching – the focus, instead, is on getting the message out”. “When you first start working there, the managers say the goal of the station is to cover stories the mainstream media ignores and to provide alternative news with a different perspective than traditional media outlets. That sounds like a noble mission right? Well, what they don’t tell you up front is that that’s not the primary goal,” said Wahl.

“After a while working for RT, you learn what stories management likes and how to tackle stories in a manner that the bosses find favourable. You come to learn that these stories must conform to a basic principle: make the US and the west look bad. In doing so, you make Russia look better by comparison.”

Russia Today declined the Guardian’s request for an interview and said it was “not possible” to answer questions about its ambitions.

[EliasAlucard]

RT is far better than the BBC. It's really more about honest reporting than funding though.

[glass]

The BBC World Service, a leading international radio and internet broadcaster providing programmes and content in English and 27 other languages, has a budget of £245 million ($382 million) that is funded from UK TV license fees. RT, with its 24-hour TV and internet coverage in English, Spanish, Arabic and Russian, plus French and German services ready to be rolled out in 2015, will reportedly have a combined budget of 15.38 billion rubles ($271 million as at December 22, 2014) for 2015.

So RT - $271m for 2015 (+40% to 2014), BBC - $382m in 2014. Yet somehow BBC is being financially outgunned

[armenianbodyhair]

BBC doesn't deserve more funding.

[LightHouse89]

I would rather fund RT news LOL

[Kalimtari]

I like German tv stations. They're really professional and quite (self-)critical.

[RussiaPrussia]

lol keep them wasting money, it doesnt matter how much youre saying if youre lying

[LightHouse89]

lol keep them wasting money, i doesnt matter how much youre saying if youre lying

bbc-big black cock LOL hahahahah I hate the BBC station. I asked my cable company to bar it. I like watching british/irish programing but not the brain wash that promotes interracialism, multiculturalism etc..

[Graham]

The BBC doesn't need a new world service. It's a public service for people in Britain. They need to limit their churning of info from other news sources too.

The lack of news from the BBC on Pedophilia cover ups, investigated by Exaro News, when the BBC 'most likely' has more inside info than anyone. Does not surprise me. Jimmy Saville was their man after all.