6 November 2018
The BBC launched its largest bureau outside the UK in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, on 5 November. Around 300 of the 600 BBC journalists working across Africa are based in the new, state-of-the-art facility.
“Our most important investment will be in training the next generation of African reporters and producers to world-class standards,” Francesca Unsworth, Director of BBC News, said.
The expansion is being funded by $376m (£289m) from the UK government and the production facilities at the bureau include a TV studio and two further live broadcast positions, two radio studios, two radio workspaces and five TV edit suites.
The Nairobi bureau follows the opening of another major hub in Nigeria’s commercial city of Lagos, where three new language services are based, while there has also been an expansion of the French service based in Senegal’s capital, Dakar.
“We are celebrating the African journalists and programme makers here today who will carry the torch of BBC professionalism, accuracy and impartiality into the future,” Rachael Akidi Okwir, Head of East Africa Languages for the BBC World Service said.
Nairobi-based BBC services: Afaan Oromo: Language of Ethiopia’s biggest ethnic group; Amharic: Ethiopia’s official language; Tigrinya: The main working language of Eritrea, along with Arabic. Also spoken in Ethiopia
Lagos-based BBC services: Igbo: An official Nigerian language. Also spoken in Equatorial Guinea; Yoruba: Spoken in south-western Nigeria and some other parts of West Africa, especially Benin and Togo; Pidgin: A creole version of English widely spoken in southern Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea
Photo: Armstong Too/BBC
24 August 2018
BBC News Burmese has launched the Burmese edition of the BBC’s flagship digital technology programme, Click. The weekly programme is aired in Myanmar by the country’s largest TV network – the state broadcaster MRTV – and is available on demand on the BBC News Burmese website bbc.com/burmese and YouTube channel.
The weekly 10-minute edition of the BBC’s TV guide to the latest technology news is produced and presented by BBC News Burmese. Click brings latest reports on apps, gadgets and games, and on technological innovations from around the world.
BBC News Burmese Editor, Soe Win Than (Min Htet), says: “In addition to BBC radio content, MRTV will now broadcast our new TV programme which will inform viewers about the most important global and regional developments in the world of digital technologies, and about the technical know-how to help improve their daily lives. This is excellent news for the BBC’s presence in Myanmar and our collaboration with MRTV. I hope our audience will welcome this addition to their weekly evening TV schedule.”
MRTV rebroadcasts BBC News Burmese weekly radio programmes: the youth show, Mobigeno (Monday at 15.15 local time), the technology and digital innovations programme, CoolTech (Tuesday at 14.20), and the programme about innovative farming methods, San Thit Tehtwin Lai Myay Ta Kwin (Thursday at 08.45).
Director of MRTV, Moe Thuzar Aung, adds: “I am really glad that, thanks to our cooperation with the BBC’s Burmese service, our channel will bring the latest technology news around the world to our audiences.”
Click will be broadcast by MRTV at 18.15 local time on Fridays and will be repeated the following Mondays at 09.20. The programme will be available on demand on the website bbc.com/burmese and BBC News Burmese YouTube channel.
In addition to collaboration with MRTV, the BBC News Burmese Monday to Friday TV news programme is broadcast by Myanmar’s digital channel, Mizzima TV (20.45). The radio programmes, Global Newsbeat, Mobigeno and the English-learning series, The English We Speak, are aired by Myanmar’s FM network, Padamyar FM. Daily top headlines from the BBC News Burmese website are directly available to users of Yangon-based website, Frontier Myanmar. Selected stories appear on the Burmese-language index of Thailand-based news website, Khaosod.
Burmese-speaking audiences can access the BBC via Facebook (over 14m followers), as well as Twitter and YouTube.
BBC News Burmese is part of the BBC World Service.
(Source: BBC press release)
16 July 2018
BBC international services reach record audience
“Reflecting the United Kingdom, its culture and values to the world”
The BBC has just published its Annual Report and Accounts 2017/18. The 270-page document gives a detailed account of the BBC’s international services, radio, television, online and social media as well as their reach and their total international weekly audience which now exceeds 345 million for all services.
The success of these services is certainly the result of a long tradition anchored when the Empire Service of the BBC, precursor of the BBC World Service, was established in 1932 by the first director general of the BBC (1927-1938) John Reith.
As Gavyn Davies, Chairman of the BBC Board of Governors, explained in a 2003 speech, when, Reith launched the service “he had a remarkable insight. The BBC’s foreign services, he said, must not be used as a propaganda weapon to spread the views of the British government, but must be seen as an independent voice, seeking only to speak the truth to its listeners.”
The following are excerpts of the BBC 2017/2018 report that give details of the BBC’s international services activities and expansion in the past year. The report says that the BBC plays and essential role carrying the distinctive culture, voice and values of the UK to the world
BBC global reach, news offer more important than ever
“Once again, the past year has highlighted the fact that, in many parts of the world,” the report says, “the media is less free than it was ten years ago. There has been the continued growth of big state-sponsored news organisations and from news aggregated by digital platforms. Al Jazeera, China Central Television (CCTV) and RT (formerly Russia Today) can command vast resources and, while the services offered by these organisations can be of high quality production, they also reflect a particular world-view and the agenda of their backers. With the possibility of state services from less free countries influencing global debate and news provision, the value to democracy and liberty of the BBC’s global reach is higher than ever.”
One of the UK’s most important cultural exports
The former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan once described the BBC World Service as quite possibly “Britain’s greatest gift to the world in the 20th century.”
The report says that it “inspires and illuminates the lives of millions around the world, helping them make sense of the world they live in. (…) The BBC’s two commercially funded international news services, BBC World News and bbc.com, continue to provide consumers with news from one of the most trusted and reliable news providers in the world. Meanwhile, BBC Worldwide – now part of the newly merged BBC Studios – invests in, commercialises and showcases content from the BBC around the world, to build the reach and reputation of the BBC brand overseas, champion British creativity and at the same time deliver commercial returns to the BBC to invest in public service content.
Record international audience
“The BBC once again attracted record audiences internationally, with the latest figures, the Global Audience Measure, revealing a total weekly audience of 376 million [taking into account de-duplication, i.e. ensuring that a person who consumes multiple BBC services or platforms or on multiple devices, is not counted many times in the top-level totals.]
“This includes all international content. This year has been a remarkable one for the BBC World Service, as it saw us carry out our biggest expansion since the 1940s, thanks to a £85 million investment during the year from the UK Government. This expansion is enabling us to bring trusted news to more parts of the world, including those in which access to free and impartial information is severely limited,” the report says.
Now available in more than 40 languages, increased international impact
The BBC World Service is “now operating in more than 40 languages around the world, from Pidgin to Korean, with new Government investment to increase the international impact and reach of the BBC.” As part of the expansion the BBC has opened new and expanded bureaux “in locations such as Dhaka, Mumbai, Nairobi, Delhi, Seoul, Bangkok, Yangon, Tunis, Cairo, Beirut and Belgrade and employed more than 1,000 new staff across the world. (…) This not only enhances our coverage for audiences abroad but also gives our UK news audiences a more in-depth view of areas that have traditionally received less coverage.”
“Having more journalists on the ground also means that we’re able to cover more under-reported areas and improve our offer to UK audiences. The BBC World Service saw its audience grow from 269 million to 279 million.”
Safeguarding World Service for future generations
“We’re aiming our international news at a new generation of users, to safeguard the World Service for future generations,” the report says, adding “this means focusing on new formats and new audiences. It is clear, for instance, that shortwave radio listening has declined rapidly again this year, and research has shown that with the increased global availability of cheap smartphones, audiences continue to switch to digital platforms for news. BBC World Service continues to do well with younger audiences internationally – a quarter of our weekly global audience is aged between 15-24.
Online offer proving an international success
The BBC’s “global commercial news website, bbc.com, continued to bring both news and features to a huge international audience. The audience for bbc.com is growing within the USA, the world’s largest media market. We have restructured our business to merge BBC Advertising with BBC Global News Ltd, the commercial subsidiary which runs both BBC World News and bbc.com. This means that the new single integrated business can develop our news content commercially,” the report says.
Global Audience Measure 2017/2018 (2016/2017) – details
347m: BBC News (Total international weekly audience – 2016/2017: 345m)
160m: BBC WS radio (English & other languages – 2016/2017: 155m)
279m: BBC WS (includes TV, radio online and social media in English and other languages – 2016/2017: 269m)
42m: BBC WS online and social media (2016/2017: 17.39m)
111m: BBC WS television non-English languages (2016/2017: 110m)
95m: BBC World News TV channel (English language global news channel 2016/2017: 99m)
37m: bbc.com (International English language) and social media
376m: Global reach, Including BBC News and BBC Studios
Note: The Global Audience Measure is an annual update of how many people are consuming the BBC weekly for all services in all countries across all platforms (television, radio, website and social media). Key to this is de-duplication i.e. ensuring that a person who consumes multiple BBC services or platforms or on multiple devices, is not counted many times in the top-level totals. For example, BBC World Service television, radio and online audience is less than the sum of its parts to ensure we do not count people more than once when looking at the total World Service audience.
59 % of foreign audience agree the BBC helps them to gain a more in-depth understanding of the news. Source: BBC Brand Tracker 2017 (not UK).
BBC is ranked No.1 for: Trust Independence Reliability (Source: BBC Brand Tracker 2017 (not UK).
21 May 2018
News content from the BBC in Thai and Burmese is now available via Thailand’s leading news website, Khaosod. Selected daily updated stories from the BBC News Thai website, bbc.com/thai, and the BBC News Burmese website, bbc.com/burmese, appear on Khaosod’s Thai- and Burmese-language indexes.
BBC News Thai Editor, Nopporn Wong-Anan says: “I am delighted to see our news stories published on a respected website such as Khaosod. I hope that, thanks to this collaboration, new users in Thailand will be able to sample our journalism – from BBC News Thai and our colleagues at BBC News Burmese – and be informed by the BBC’s globally trusted news coverage.”
Executive Editor of Khaosod, Chumchan Chamniprasart (pictured right), commented: “Khaosod is excited to enter a partnership with the BBC in disseminating news, articles and interviews with various viewpoints from BBC News Thai and BBC News Burmese in an age when vast amounts of information circulate. We are firm in our belief that, as accurate mainstream news sources, both Khaosod and BBC serve the public through journalism.”
BBC News Thai reaches around 1.6m people every week via its website bbc.com/thai and social platforms such as Facebook (with over 2.2m followers), Instagram and YouTube. The service covers national, regional and international politics, as well as business, culture, health, technology, science and entertainment, women’s issues and social affairs. BBC News Thai also carries material from BBC Learning English for Thai-speaking learners.
BBC News Burmese reaches a weekly audience of 6m via the website bbc.com/burmese, Facebook (with over 13.3m followers, more than a million of whom are in Thailand), Twitter and YouTube, daily radio broadcasts and a Monday to Friday TV news programme.
BBC News Thai and BBC News Burmese are part of the BBC World Service.
8 May 2018
Broadcasts from the BBC and VoA have been stopped in Burundi, two weeks before the country votes in a referendum that could see the president’s rule extended for over a decade. At the same time, Radio France Internationale has been warned against broadcasting remarks that are “untruthful and partisan”.
On 4 May, a statement was issued by the country’s media regulator, the National Communication Council, stating: “The international radios, ‘BBC London’ and ‘Voice of America ‘VOA’ have been suspended from broadcasting throughout the Burundi territory for six months starting on 7 May 2018 for breaching laws regulating the media and unethical conduct.”
“We are dismayed by the actions taken today by the Burundi National Communications Council to ban VOA from broadcasting its news and information programs,” said VOA director Amanda Bennett.
According to Human Rights Watch, Burundi enjoyed one of the most independent media environments in the region. When President Pierre Nkurunziza (pictured) – who has been in power since 2005 – announced his bid for a third term in 2015, there was a significant tightening of restrictions on the media. Today, the World Press Freedom Index ranks Burundi at position 159 of 180 countries in the press freedom index.
BBC World Service programmes have been carried on its local FM relays in Burundi until the crackdown: Bujumbura on 90.2MHz and Mount Manga on 105.6MHz. VoA also has two local FM relays in the country.
