
The current BBC News logo
BBC News, formerly
BBC News and Current
Affairs, is the department within the
British Broadcasting
Corporation responsible for the corporation's news-gathering
and production of news programmes on BBC television, radio and
online.
Producing 120 hours of output daily, it is the largest broadcasting
news gatherer in the world. It maintains its key objective of the
BBC's
Royal Charter to
"collect
news and information in any part of the world and in any manner
that may be thought fit".
Political
coverage is based at the Millbank Studios in 4 Millbank
in Westminster
. With an annual budget of £350 million, BBC
News consists of 3,500 staff, 2,000 of which are
journalists.
The core BBC News department is based at the
News Centre within BBC Television Centre
in West London, W12, and is also represented by
regional centres across the United Kingdom. The service's
global reach is the largest and deepest of any of its kind in the
world: there are correspondents in almost all 240 countries
worldwide, with 44 news-gathering bureaus based around the world.
There are also three BBC News bureaus based within the UK.
Unlike almost all other countries' news organs, the BBC is a
quasi-
autonomous organisation and does
not ally itself politically with the
Government of the United Kingdom,
though it does pay occasional respects to
its Queen.
It has however been
accused of left-wing bias by right-wingers
and right-wing bias by left-wingers, and
has sometimes opposed UK Government policy, such as its accusation
in 2005 that the administration was "sexing up" the war in Iraq
.
Competition within the UK comes from rolling news channel
Sky News as well as the independent
ITN, a major independent provider of news services to
ITV and
Channel 4.
Around the world the BBC complements other news providers'
services, as well as has its own.
Some countries have restricted or banned BBC broadcasts and
journalists' movements for internal political reasons, forcing
correspondents to report on events in those countries from
neighbouring countries.
BBC News is currently headed by
Helen
Boaden.
History
The early years

A BBC produced newsreel.
The
British
Broadcasting Company broadcast its first radio
bulletin from 2LO
on 14 November 1922. Televised bulletins
came later on 5 July 1954, broadcast from leased studios within
Alexandra
Palace
in London. However Gaumont British and
Movietone cinema
newsreels had been
broadcast on the TV service since 1936 -with the BBC producing its
own filmed equivalent
Television
Newsreel programme from January 1948. A weekly
Children's Newsreel was inaugurated on 23 April 1950,
broadcasting to around 350,000 receivers.
The public's interest in television and live events was stimulated
by
Elizabeth II's
coronation
in 1953. It is estimated that up to 27 million people viewed the
programme in the UK - overtaking radio's audience of 12 million for
the first time - and those live pictures were fed from 21 cameras
in central London to Alexandra Palace for transmission, and then on
to other UK transmitters opened in time for the event. In
coronation year there were
around two million TV Licences held in the UK, rising to over
three million the following year and four and a half million by
1955.
1950s
Television news, although physically separate from its radio
counterpart, was still firmly under its control - with
correspondents providing reports for both outlets - and that first
bulletin, shown in 1954 on the then
BBC
television service and presented by
Richard Baker, involved his
providing narration off-screen while stills were shown - and this
was then followed by the customary
Television Newsreel
with a recorded commentary by
John
Snagge (and on other occasions by
Andrew Timothy).
It was revealed that this had been due to producers fearing a
newsreader with their facial movements could distract the viewer
from the story in question. On-screen newsreaders were finally
introduced a year later, in 1955 -
Kenneth Kendall (the first to appear in
vision),
Robert Dougall and Richard
Baker - just three weeks before
ITN's launch
date of 21 September 1955.
Mainstream
television production had started to move out of Alexandra Palace
in 1950 to larger premises - mainly at Lime Grove
Studios
in Shepherd's Bush
, west London - taking Current Affairs (then known
as Talks Department) with it, and it was from here that the first
Panorama was
transmitted on 11 November 1953, with Richard Dimbleby taking over as anchor in
1955. On 18 February 1957 the topical early-evening
programme Tonight
hosted by Cliff Michelmore and
designed to fill the airtime provided by the abolition of the
Toddlers' Truce, was broadcast from
Marconi's Viking Studio in St Mary Abbott's Place, Kensington
- with the programme moving into a Lime Grove
studio in 1960 where it already maintained its production
office.
Later in 1957, on 28 October in central London, radio launched its
morning programme
Today on
the
Home Service.
In 1958
Hugh Carleton Greene
became head of News and Current Affairs, and set up a BBC study
group whose findings, published in 1959, were critical of what the
television news operation had become under Greene's predecessor
Tahu Hole. The solution proposed was that
the head of television news should take control (away from radio),
and that the television service should have a proper newsroom of
its own, with an editor-of-the-day.
1960s
On 1 January 1960, Greene became
Director General and under him big changes
were afoot not only for
BBC
Television, but also for BBC Television News - a separate news
department, formed in 1955 as a response to the founding of
ITN - the aim was to make BBC reporting a little
more like ITN, which had been praised by Greene's study
group.
A newsroom
was created at Alexandra
Palace
, television reporters recruited, and given the
opportunity to write and voice their own scripts - without the
"impossible burden" of having to cover stories for radio
too.
In 1987, almost thirty years later,
John Birt resurrected the practice of
correspondents working for both TV and radio with the introduction
of bi-media journalism, and 2008 saw tri-media introduced across
TV, radio and online.
Also in 1960,
Nan Winton, the first
female BBC network newsreader, appeared in vision on 20 June, and
19 September saw the start of the radio news and current affairs
programme
The Ten O'clock News.
Greene was a great innovator and (on a lighter note) asked
Ned Sherrin, the then producer of
Tonight to "prick the pomposity of public figures" with a
weekly television show. So on 24 November 1962
That Was The Week That Was,
hosted by
David Frost, was
born at Lime Grove Studios and is mentioned here because (of
Greene's actions) it was a product of
Current Affairs department
rather than
Light
Entertainment.
BBC 2 started transmission on 20 April 1964,
and with it came a new news programme for that channel -
Newsroom.

Newsroom launched in 1964 - in 1968 it
became the UK's first colour television news programme.
The World at One
(WATO) began on 4 October 1965 on the then, Home Service,
and the year before
News Review had started on
television.
News Review was a roundup of the weeks news, first
broadcast on Sunday 26 April 1964 on BBC 2 and harking back to the
weekly
Newsreel Review of the Week (produced from 1951) to
open programming on Sunday evenings - the difference being that
this incarnation had subtitles for the deaf and hard-of-hearing. As
this was the decade before electronic caption generation, each
"super" (superimposition) had to be produced on paper or card,
synchronised manually to studio and news
footage, committed to tape during the afternoon and
broadcast early evening - thus Sundays were no longer a quiet day
for news at Alexandra Palace. The programme ran until the 1980s -
by then using electronic captions, known as Anchor - to be
superseded by
Ceefax subtitling (a similar
format), and the signing of such programmes as
See Hear (from 1981).
On Sunday 17 September 1967
The World This Weekend launched
on the then, Home Service, but soon-to-be
Radio 4.
Preparations for colour began in the autumn
of 1967 and on Thursday 7 March 1968 Newsroom on BBC 2,
moved to an early evening slot, became the first UK news programme
to be transmitted in colour - from Studio A at Alexandra Palace -
News Review and Westminster (the latter a weekly
review of Parliamentary
happenings) were "colourised" shortly
after.
Much of the insert material was still in black and white however,
as initially only a part of the film coverage shot in and around
London was on colour
reversal film
stock, and all regional and many
international contributions were still in black and white too.
Colour facilities were also technically very limited for the next
eighteen months at Alexandra Palace, as it had only one
RCA colour
videotape machine
and, eventually two,
Pye colour
telecines - although the news colour service
started with just one.
Black and
white national bulletins on BBC 1 continued to originate from
Studio B on weekdays, along with Town and Around - the London regional
"opt out" programme broadcast throughout the
1960s (and the BBC's first regional news programme for the South
East) - until it started to be replaced by Nationwide on Tuesday to
Thursday from Lime Grove
Studios
early in September 1969. Town and
Around was never to make the move to Television Centre -
instead it became
London This Week which transmitted on
Mondays and Fridays only from the new TVC studios.
Television News moves to Television Centre
The final news programme to come from Alexandra Palace was a late
night news on BBC 2 on Friday 19 September 1969 in colour. It was
said that over this September weekend, sixty-five removal vans were
needed to transfer the contents of Alexandra Palace across London.
BBC Television News resumed operations the next day with a
lunchtime bulletin on BBC 1 - in black and white - from Television
Centre, where it has remained ever since.
This move to better technical facilities, but much smaller studios,
allowed
Newsroom and
News Review to replace
back projection with
CSO.
And it also allowed
all news output to be produced in
PAL colour, in preparation for the
"colourisation" of BBC 1 from 15 November 1969 - the studios were
capable of operating in
NTSC too for the US,
Canada and Japan as the BBC occasionally provided facilities for
overseas broadcasters. During the 1960s
satellite communication had become
not only possible, but popular, however colour field-store
standards converters were
still in their infancy in 1968 and we would have to wait until the
1970s for digital line-store conversion to do the job
seamlessly.
1970s
On 14 September 1970 the first
Nine O'Clock News was broadcast
on television with Robert Dougall presenting the first week from
studio N1 - described by
The
Guardian as "a sort of polystyrene padded cell" - the
bulletin having been moved from the earlier time of 20:45 as a
response to the ratings achieved by
ITNs
News at Ten introduced three
years earlier. Richard Baker and Kenneth Kendall presented
subsequent weeks, thus echoing those first television bulletins of
the mid 1950s.
The
Nine made history again in 1975 with the appointment
of
Angela Rippon as the first female
news presenter. Her work outside the news was controversial for the
time, appearing on the
Morecambe and
Wise show singing and dancing.
The early evening news on BBC 1 remained at its regular time of
17:50 - there would be another fourteen years before it got a
similar makeover to become the
Six
O'Clock News.
The first edition of
John Craven's
Newsround - initially intended only as a short series and
later renamed just
Newsround -
came from studio N3 on 4 April 1972.
Afternoon television news bulletins during the mid to late 1970s
were broadcast from the BBC newsroom itself, rather than one of the
three news studios. The newsreader would present to camera while
sitting on the edge of a desk; behind him staff would be seen
working busily at their desks. This period corresponded with when
the
Nine O'Clock News got its next makeover, and would use
a CSO background of the newsroom from that very same camera each
weekday evening.

.... and went through several changes
in its 30 year run.
Also in the mid seventies, the late night news on BBC 2 was briefly
renamed
Newsnight, but this wasn't to last, or be the same
programme as we know today - that would be launched in 1980 - and
it soon reverted to being just a news summary with the early
evening BBC 2 news expanded to become
Newsday.
News on radio was to change in the 1970s, and on Radio 4 in
particular, brought about by the arrival of new editor Peter Woon
from television news and the implementation of the
Broadcasting
in the Seventies report. These included the introduction of
correspondents into news bulletins where previously only a
newsreader would present, as well as the inclusion of content
gathered in the preparation process. New programmes were also added
to the daily schedule,
PM and
The World Tonight as part of the plan for
the station to become a "wholly speech network".
Newsbeat launched as the news service on
Radio 1 on 10 September 1973.
The 23 September 1974 saw the launch of the
Ceefax teletext system,
developed to bring news content on television screens using text
only. Engineers originally began developing such a system as a form
of communicating news for deaf viewers but the system was expanded.
The service is now much more diverse, listing details such as
weather, flight times and film reviews.
The decline in shooting film for news broadcasts became more
prevalent, as
ENG
equipment became less cumbersome - the BBC's first attempts had
been using a
Philips colour camera with
backpack base station and separate portable
Sony U-matic recorder in the
latter half of the decade.
1980s

1980s computer generated titles.
By 1982 ENG technology had become so stable that an
Ikegami camera was used by
Bernard Hesketh to cover the
Falklands War - winning him the
RTS TV Cameraman of the Year award
and a
BAFTA nomination for his "footage" - the
first time that the electronic camera had been relied upon in a
conflict zone by BBC News, rather than film. BBC News won the BAFTA
for its actuality coverage, however the event has become remembered
in television terms for
Brian
Hanrahan's reporting where he coined the phrase "I counted them
all out and I counted them all back" to circumvent restrictions,
and which has become cited as an example of good reporting under
pressure.
Two years
prior to this the Iranian Embassy Siege
had been shot electronically by the BBC Television
News OB team with Kate Adie reporting live from Prince's Gate, again nominated for BAFTA
actuality coverage, but this time beaten by ITN for the 1980
award.
Newsnight, the news and current
affairs programme still running to this day, was due to go on air
on 23 January 1980, although trade union disagreements meant that
its launch from Lime Grove was postponed by a week".
On 27 August 1981
Moira Stuart became
the first Afro-Caribbean female newsreader to appear on British
television.
The first BBC breakfast television programme,
Breakfast Time also launched during the
1980s, on 17 January 1983 from Lime Grove Studio E and two weeks
before its
ITV rival
TV-am.
Presenters including
Frank Bough,
Selina Scott and
Nick Ross helped to wake viewers with a relaxed
style of presenting.
The
Six O'Clock News first aired on 3 September 1984,
eventually becoming the most watched news programme in the UK
(however, since 2006 it has been overtaken by the
BBC News at Ten).
Starting in 1981, the BBC gave a common theme to its main news
bulletins with new electronic titles - a set of animated
computerised "stripes" forming a circle on a red background with a
"BBC News" typescript appearing below the circle graphics, and a
theme tune consisting of brass and keyboards. The
Nine
used a similar (stripey) number 9. The red background was replaced
by a blue from 1985 until 1987.
By 1987, the BBC had decided to re-brand its bulletins and
established individual styles again for each one with differing
titles and music, the weekend and holiday bulletins branded in a
similar style to the
Nine, although the "stripes"
introduction continued to be used until 1989 on occasions where a
news bulletin was screened out of the running order of the
schedule.
1990s

The
Nine O'Clock News moved
to 22:00 in 2000.
During the 1990s, a wider range of services began to be offered by
BBC News, with the split of
BBC World Service
Television to become
BBC World (news
and current affairs), and
BBC Prime (light
entertainment). Content for a 24 hour news channel was thus
required, followed in 1997 with the launch of domestic equivalent
BBC News 24. Rather than set bulletins,
ongoing reports and coverage was needed to keep both channels
functioning and meant a greater emphasis in budgeting for both was
necessary.
In 1998
after 66 years at Broadcasting House, the BBC Radio
News operation moved to BBC Television Centre
.
New '
Silicon Graphics' technology
came into use in 1993 for a relaunch of the main BBC One bulletins,
creating a virtual set which appeared to be much larger than it was
physically. The relaunch also brought all bulletins into the same
style of set with only small changes in colouring, titles and music
to differentiate each. A computer generated glass sculpture of the
BBC coat of arms was the
centrepiece of the programme titles until the largescale
corporation rebranding of news services in 1999.
In 1999, the biggest relaunch occurred, with BBC One bulletins, BBC
World, BBC News 24 and
BBC News
Online all adopting a common style. One of the most significant
changes was the gradual adoption of the corporate image by the
BBC regional news
programmes, giving a common style across local, national and
international BBC television news. This also included
Newyddion, the main news programme of
Welsh language channel
S4C, produced by BBC News Wales. The introduction of
regional headlines at the start of bulletins followed in 2000
though the English regions lost five minutes at the end of
bulletins, due to a new headline round-up at 18:55.
It was also in 2000 that the
Nine O'Clock News moved to
the later time of 22:00. This was in response to ITN who had just
moved their popular
News at Ten
programme to 23:00. ITN briefly returned
News at Ten but
following poor ratings when head to head against the BBC's
Ten
O'Clock News, the ITN bulletin was moved to 22.30, where it
remained until 14 January 2008.
2000s

BBC News is set to move to the newly
refurbished Broadcasting House by 2011.
The retirement of
Michael Buerk and
departure of
Peter Sissons from the
Ten O'Clock News led to changes in the BBC One bulletin
presenting team on 20 January 2003. The
Six O'Clock News
became double headed with
George
Alagiah and
Sophie Raworth after
Huw Edwards and
Fiona Bruce moving to present the
Ten.
At the time of the changes, a new set design featuring a projected
background image of a fictional newsroom was introduced, with new
programme titles were introduced on 16 February 2004 to match those
of BBC News 24.
BBC News 24 and BBC World introduced a brand new style of
presentation in December 2003, that was slightly altered on 5 July
2004 to mark 50 years of BBC Television News.
The BBC announced editorial changes for the main news bulletins on
8 November 2005, that the roles of individual editors of the
One and
Six O'Clock News would be replaced by one
single daytime position.
Kevin
Bakhurst was introduced as the new Controller of BBC News 24,
replacing the position of editor. Amanda Farnsworth became daytime
editor and Craig Oliver was later named editor of the
Ten
O'Clock News. The bulletins were also to be
simulcast with News 24, explained by Head of
Television News
Peter Horrocks as
allowing for the pooling of resources.
Bulletins received new titles and a new set design in May 2006, to
allow for
Breakfast to move into the main studio for the
first time since 1997. The new set featured
Barco videowall screens with a background of the
London skyline used for main bulletins and originally an image of
cirrus clouds against a blue sky for
Breakfast. This was
later replaced following viewer criticism. The studio bears
similarities to changes made at
ITV News in
2004, though ITN uses a
CSO Virtual studio rather than the actual screens
at BBC News.
A new graphics and video playout system was introduced for
production of television bulletins in January 2007. This coincided
with a new structure to BBC World News bulletins, editors favouring
a section devoted to analysing the news stories reported on.
The first new BBC News bulletin since the
Six O'Clock News
was announced in July 2007 following a successful trial in the
Midlands. The summary, lasting 90 seconds, has been broadcast at
20:00 on weekdays since December 2007 and bears similarities with
60 Seconds on
BBC Three, but also includes headlines from the
various BBC regions.
BBC News television bulletins underwent their largest change since
1999 on 21 April 2008, with new identities created by the branding
agency
Lambie-Nairn. The programme was
part of a long-term cost cutting plan at the BBC. BBC News 24 was
renamed the
BBC News Channel and moved into the same
studio, N6, as the BBC One bulletins at BBC Television Centre. BBC
World was renamed
BBC World News and the BBC One bulletins
renamed
BBC News at One,
Six and
Ten
respectively. All the changes followed the redesign of the BBC News
website earlier in the year. Regional news programmes were also
relaunched following the new style.
The studio moves also meant that Studio N9, previously used for BBC
World, was closed, and operations moved to the previous studio of
BBC News 24. Studio N9 was later refitted to match the new
branding, and was used for the BBC's UK Local Elections and
European Elections coverage in early June 2009.
Organisational changes
BBC News became part of the new BBC Journalism group in November
2006 as part of a major restructuring of the BBC.
Helen Boaden remains Director of BBC News,
reporting to
Mark Byford, head of the
new group and Deputy Director-General.
It was announced on 18 October 2007 as part of
Mark Thompson's new six year plan,
Delivering Creative Future, that there would no longer be
a television Current Affairs department in its own right - it would
become a unit within the new News Programmes department. The
Director General's
announcement, in response to a £2billion shortfall in funding,
would deliver
"a smaller, but fitter, BBC" in the digital
age - along with imminent job cuts and the sale of Television
Centre in 2013.
The various newsrooms of the BBC: television, radio and online,
were merged together to create a multimedia newsroom - programme
making within the newsrooms was brought together to form the
multimedia programme making departments. Peter Horrocks, referring
to the changes, stated that the move would bring about a greater
efficiency - particularly at a time of cost-cutting at the BBC. He
highlighted the dilemma faced with such a change in his blog: that
by using the same resources across the various broadcasting mediums
means fewer stories can be covered - or by following more stories,
there would be fewer ways to broadcast them.
The
entire News Operation is due to move from Television Centre to new
facilities at Broadcasting House
at Portland Place, Central London. Refurbishment and
extension work was scheduled for completion in 2008 though delays
have seen the deadline extended until 2010, with news expecting to
move in in 2012. The new building will also become home to the
BBC World Service once the lease
on
Bush House expires.
Broadcasting media
Television

News operations have been based at the
News Centre in Television Centre since 1997.
BBC News is responsible for the main news bulletins on
BBC One as well as other programmes on
BBC Two,
BBC Three,
BBC Four, the
BBC News Channel, and the provision of
22 hours of programming for
BBC World
News. Coverage for
BBC Parliament
is carried out on behalf on the BBC at
Millbank Studios though BBC News provides
editorial and journalistic content.
BBC News content is also output onto the BBC's digital interactive
television services under the
BBC Red
Button brand, and the legacy analogue
Ceefax teletext system.
The distinctive music on all BBC television news programmes was
introduced in 1999 and composed by
David
Lowe. It was part of the extensive re-branding which commenced
in 1999 and features the classic '
BBC Pips'
The general theme was used not only on bulletins on
BBC One but News 24, BBC World and local news
programmes in the BBC's
Nations and Regions.
Lowe was also responsible for the music on Radio One's
Newsbeat. The theme has had several changes
since 1999.
The
BBC Arabic Television news
channel launched on 11 March 2008 - with a Persian language channel following on
14 January 2009, broadcasting from the Egton wing of Broadcasting
House; both include news, analysis, interviews, sports and highly
cultural programmes and are run by the BBC World Service and funded from a
grant-in-aid from the British Foreign
Office
(and not the television
licence).
Radio
BBC Radio News produces bulletins for the BBC's national radio
stations and provides content for local BBC radio stations via the
General News Service (GNS). BBC News does not produce the BBC's
regional news bulletins, which are produced individually by the BBC
nations and regions themselves. The
BBC World Service broadcasts to some 150
million people in English as well as 32 languages across the
globe.
Online
BBC News Online is the BBC's news
website. Launched in November 1997, it is one
of the most popular news websites in the UK reaching over a quarter
of the UK's internet users, and worldwide, with around 14 million
global readers every month. The website contains exhaustive
international news coverage as well as entertainment, sport,
science, and political news. Many reports are accompanied by audio
and video from the BBC's television and radio news services within
the BBC News player.
Television and radio bulletins are also available to view on the
site, together with current affairs programmes including
Newsnight and
Question Time are available
to view on the site after they have been broadcast, while the BBC
News channel is available to view 24 hours a day. Certain radio and
television broadcasts are available for download as podcasts as
part of the BBC's download trial.
Opinions
Political and commercial independence
The BBC is required by its charter to be free from both political
and commercial influence and answers only to its viewers and
listeners. Nevertheless, the BBC's political objectivity is
sometimes questioned.
For instance, The Daily Telegraph (3 August 2005)
carried a letter from the KGB
defector
Oleg Gordievsky, referring to it as
"The Red Service". Books have been written on the subject,
although rarely from people writing neutrally themselves ,
including anti-BBC works like
Truth Betrayed by W J West
and
The Truth Twisters by Richard Deacon.
The BBC is regularly accused by the government of the day of bias
in favour of the opposition and, by the opposition, of bias in
favour of the government. Similarly, during times of war, the BBC
is often accused by the UK government, or by strong supporters of
British military campaigns, of being overly sympathetic to the view
of the enemy. An edition of
Newsnight at
the start of the
Falklands War in 1982
was described as "almost treasonable" by Conservative MP
John Page, who objected to the
presenter
Peter Snow talking of "if we
believe the British".
During the first
Gulf War, critics of the
BBC took to using the satirical name "Baghdad Broadcasting
Corporation". During the
Kosovo War, the
BBC were labeled the "Belgrade Broadcasting Corporation" by British
ministers, although
Slobodan
Milosevic later complained that the BBC's coverage had been
biased
against the Serbs.
Conversely, some of those who style themselves anti-establishment
in the United Kingdom or who oppose foreign wars have accused the
BBC of pro-establishment bias or of refusing to give an outlet to
"anti-war" voices. Following the 2003 invasion of Iraq a study, by
the Cardiff University School of Journalism, of the reporting of
the war, found that nine out of 10 references to weapons of mass
destruction during the war assumed that Iraq possessed them, and
only one in 10 questioned this assumption. It also found that out
of the main British broadcasters covering the war the BBC was the
most likely to use the British government and military as its
source. It was also the least likely to use independent sources,
like the Red Cross, who were more critical of the war. When it came
to reporting Iraqi casualties the study found fewer reports on the
BBC than on the other three main channels. The report's author,
Justin Lewis, wrote of his findings: "Far from revealing an
anti-war BBC, our findings tend to give credence to those who
criticised the BBC for being too sympathetic to the government in
its war coverage. Either way, it is clear that the accusation of
BBC anti-war bias fails to stand up to any serious or sustained
analysis."
Prominent BBC appointments are constantly assessed by the British
media and political establishment for signs of political bias. The
appointment of
Greg Dyke as
Director-General was highlighted by press sources because Dyke was
a Labour Party member and former activist, as well as a friend of
Tony Blair. The BBC's current Political
Editor,
Nick Robinson, was some years
ago a chairman of the
Young
Conservatives and has, as a result, attracted informal
criticism from the current Labour government, but his predecessor
Andrew Marr faced similar claims from
the right because he was editor of the liberal leaning
Independent newspaper before his own
appointment in 2000.
Hutton Inquiry
BBC News was at the centre of one the largest political
controversies in recent years. Three BBC News reports (
Andrew Gilligan's on
Today, Gavin Hewitt's on
The Ten
O'Clock News and another on
Newsnight) quoted an anonymous source that
stated the British government (particularly the Prime Minister's
office) had embellished the
September
Dossier with misleading exaggerations of Iraq's
weapons of mass destruction
capabilities. The government denounced the reports and accused the
corporation of poor journalism.
In subsequent weeks the corporation stood by the report, saying
that it had a reliable source. Following intense media speculation,
David Kelly was named
in the press as the source for Gilligan's story on 9 July 2003.
Kelly was found dead, by suicide, in a field close to his home
early on 18 July. An inquiry led by
Lord Hutton was announced by the
British government the following day to investigate the
circumstances leading to Kelly's death, concluding that "Dr. Kelly
took his own life."
In his report on 28 January 2004, Lord Hutton concluded that
Gilligan's original accusation was "unfounded" and the BBC's
editorial and management processes were "defective". In particular,
it specifically criticised the chain of management that caused the
BBC to defend its story. The BBC Director of News,
Richard Sambrook, the report said, had
accepted Gilligan's word that his story was accurate in spite of
his notes being incomplete. Davies had then told the BBC Board of
Governors that he was happy with the story and told the Prime
Minister that a satisfactory internal inquiry had taken place. The
Board of Governors, under BBC Chairman
Gavyn Davies' guidance, accepted that further
investigation of the Government's complaints were
unnecessary.
Because of the criticism in the Hutton report, Davies resigned on
the day of publication. BBC News faced an important test, reporting
on itself with the publication of the report, but by common consent
(of the Board of Governors) managed this "independently,
impartially and honestly". Davies' resignation was followed by the
resignation of
Director
General Greg Dyke the following day,
and the resignation of Gilligan on 30 January. While doubtless a
traumatic experience for the corporation, an ICM poll in April 2003
indicated that it had sustained its position as the best and most
trusted provider of news.
Israeli-Palestinian conflict
The BBC
has faced accusations of holding both anti-Arab
and anti-Israel
biases, and
being anti-semitic.
For example, Douglas Davis, the London correspondent of
The Jerusalem Post, has
described the BBC's coverage of the
Arab-Israeli conflict as "a
relentless, one-dimensional portrayal of Israel as a demonic,
criminal state and Israelis as brutal oppressors [which] bears all
the hallmarks of a concerted campaign of vilification that,
wittingly or not, has the effect of delegitimizing the Jewish state
and pumping oxygen into a dark old European hatred that dared not
speak its name for the past half-century.". Yet the two large
independent studies, one conducted by Loughborough University and
the other by Glasgow University's Media Group (published in Bad
News from Israel) showed strong bias towards Israel, emanating
largely the historical narrative selected by journalists and the
better PR employed by the Israeli government
Noam Chomsky, and David Edwards of
Medialens.org tend to criticize the BBC through differences in
terminology sometimes used to describe Israeli and Palestinian
actions. Israeli shootings are usually described as "security
sweeps" or "incursions", while Palestinian shootings are described
as "terrorist killings" committed by "gunmen".
An independent panel was set up in 2006 to review the impartiality
of the BBC's coverage of the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The panel's assessment was that "apart from individual lapses,
there was little to suggest deliberate or systematic bias." While
noting a "commitment to be fair accurate and impartial" and
praising much of the BBC's coverage the independent panel concluded
"that BBC output does not consistently give a full and fair account
of the conflict. In some ways the picture is incomplete and, in
that sense, misleading." The main biases observed can be found
bullet-pointed at the end of the study's conclusion. It reports
that there was disparity in favour or Israelis in the amount of
talk time given to non-party actors, to civilians, in the
appearance of non-party actors and civilians, that Israeli
casualties received more attention, that US/UK sources dominated as
"foreign" sources, that important actions such as land-annexations
by Israel were overlooked, and that there was a lack of historical
context.
Writing in the FT, Philip Stephens, one of the panelists, later
accused the BBC's director-general, Mark Thompson, of
misrepresenting the panel's conclusions. He further opined "My
sense is that BBC news reporting has also lost a once iron-clad
commitment to objectivity and a necessary respect for the
democratic process. If I am right, the BBC, too, is lost". Mark
Thompson published a rebuttal in the FT the next day.
The report listed examples of how the BBC could be said to be
misleading by failing to describe hardships of the Palestinians in
section 4.7. The Guardian too has noted that "The BBC has had a
difficult time over its coverage of Israel, with regular
accusations of bias coming from both the Israeli and Palestinian
sides".
The description by one BBC correspondent reporting on the funeral
of
Yassir Arafat that she had been
left with tears in her eyes led to other questions of impartiality,
particularly from Martin Walker'" in a guest opinion piece in
The Times, who picked out the
apparent case of Fayad Abu Shamala, the
BBC
Arabic Service correspondent, who told a
Hamas rally on 6 May 2001, that journalists in Gaza
were "waging the campaign shoulder to shoulder together with the
Palestinian people."
Walker argues that the independent inquiry was flawed for two
reasons.
Firstly, because the time period over which
it was conducted (August 2005 to January 2006) surrounded the
Israeli withdrawal from Gaza
and Ariel Sharon's stroke, which produced more
positive coverage than usual. Furthermore, he wrote, the
inquiry only looked at the BBC's domestic coverage, and excluded
output on the BBC World Service and BBC World.
The BBC also faced criticism for not airing a
Disasters Emergency Committee
aid appeal for Palestinians who suffered in Gaza during 22-day war
there in late 2008/early 2009. Most other major UK broadcasters did
air this appeal, but rival Sky News did not.
The view of foreign governments
BBC News reporters and broadcasts are now and have in the past been
banned in several countries primarily for reporting which has been
unfavourable to the ruling government. For example, correspondents
were banned by the former
apartheid régime
of South Africa.
The BBC was banned in Zimbabwe
under Mugabe's
government for eight years as a terrorist
organisation until being allowed to operate again over a year after
the 2008
elections. The BBC has been banned in Burma (officially
Myanmar) since the anti-government protests there in September
2007.
Other cases have included Uzbekistan
,China, and Pakistan
. The BBC online news site's
Persian version was recently blocked from
the Iranian internet. The BBC News website was made available in
China again in March 2008
See also
References
- The BBC's Millbank
Studios are also a fall-back for news operations in the event of
TVC failure, and are continually recording the last hour of the
BBC News Channel output (less
in-vision clock) for this purpose.
- Media resources Longsands College - [1]
- History of the BBC - key dates page 4 BBC
Heritage 1960s
- BBC Guide to Comedy TW3
- History of the BBC - key dates page 5 BBC
Heritage 1960s
- London This Week had started in early 1969 as a once
per week "opt out" replacing the Friday edition of Town and
Around
- Bawdeswell.net [2]
- Early Satellite Broadcasts 1960s & 70s,
British TV History
- 1968 - A new field store converter for Mexico City
Olympic Games 1960s Milestones, BBC Research Department
- 1970 - Digital line-store standards converter work
commences 1970s Milestones, BBC Research Department
- - Robert Dougall was even less flattering about the first
set, and is quoted as saying that the tiling was "grey and
lavatorial" [3] together with "a huge round thing" in the
background - referring to the new rotating clockface logo and CSO
screen.
- History of the BBC - key dates page 4 BBC
Heritage 1970s
- (PDF)
- BAFTA 1982 - page 12 British Academy of Film
and Television Arts (PDF) [4]
- BAFTA 1982 - page 10 British Academy of Film
and Television Arts (PDF)
- The worst reported war since the Crimean - Julian
Barnes 25 February 2002, Guardian Unlimited
- Media & War - The Falklands Conflict
Imperial War Museum
- BAFTA 1980 - page 2 British Academy of Film and
Television Arts (PDF)
- The circle had been a recurring theme of the BBC1 news logo
since the start of the Nine in 1970, as it was thought to
fit in nicely with the BBC1 idents of the globe logo and clock
which quite often preceded it - and this logo, representing a
clockface, indicated the time of the news. It came from a box
similar to the one which generated the BBC2 network logo
used from 1979 until 1986, the news version being known as ANT
(Animated News Titles) [5] and this new logo was drawn live -
triggered by an audio tone on track 2 of the 2-track mono quarter
inch audio tape of opening title music to ensure sychronisation -
and also produced the "venetian blind" wipe to the opening
story.
- >
- Denis Taylor, "BBC broadcasts jammed", The Times, 4
May 1982, p. 2.
- Davis, Douglas. "Hatred in the air: the BBC, Israel and
Antisemitism" in Iganski, Paul & Kosmin, Barry. (eds) A New
Anti-Semitism? Debating Judeophobia in 21st century Britain.
Profile Books, 2003, p. 130.
- Philip Stephens: BBC is losing public service plot, FT 20 Jun
2006
- The BBC's success story has a public service plot, Mark
Thompson, Financial Times, 21 Jun 2006
- BBC Urdo taken off Pakistan radio - BBC News:
15 November 2005
- BBC News Website Gets Access in China Dinesh
Singh-Rawat. ABC Live. 25 March 2008
External links