BBC Monitoring is a division of the British Broadcasting Corporation which monitors, and reports on, mass media worldwide. Based at Caversham Park

Caversham Park

Caversham Park is a Victorian stately home with parkland in the suburb of Caversham, on the outskirts of Reading, England. Historically it was in Oxfordshire, but since 1911 it has been in Berkshire.-Early History:...

 in Caversham

Caversham, Berkshire

Caversham is a suburb and former village in the unitary authority of Reading, England. It lies on the north bank of the River Thames, within the royal county of Berkshire, on the opposite bank from the rest of Reading...

, Reading

Reading, Berkshire

Reading is a large town and unitary authority area in England. It is located in the Thames Valley at the confluence of the River Thames and River Kennet, and on both the Great Western Main Line railway and the M4 motorway, some west of London....

 in southern England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

, it has a number of overseas bureaux including Moscow

Moscow

Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...

, Nairobi

Nairobi

Nairobi is the capital and largest city of Kenya. The city and its surrounding area also forms the Nairobi County. The name "Nairobi" comes from the Maasai phrase Enkare Nyirobi, which translates to "the place of cool waters". However, it is popularly known as the "Green City in the Sun" and is...

, Kiev

Kiev

Kiev or Kyiv is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300. However, higher numbers have been cited in the press....

, Baku

Baku

Baku , sometimes spelled as Baki or Bakou, is the capital and largest city of Azerbaijan, as well as the largest city on the Caspian Sea and of the Caucasus region. It is located on the southern shore of the Absheron Peninsula, which projects into the Caspian Sea. The city consists of two principal...

, Tashkent

Tashkent

Tashkent is the capital of Uzbekistan and of the Tashkent Province. The officially registered population of the city in 2008 was about 2.2 million. Unofficial sources estimate the actual population may be as much as 4.45 million.-Early Islamic History:...

, Cairo

Cairo

Cairo , is the capital of Egypt and the largest city in the Arab world and Africa, and the 16th largest metropolitan area in the world. Nicknamed "The City of a Thousand Minarets" for its preponderance of Islamic architecture, Cairo has long been a centre of the region's political and cultural life...

, Tbilisi

Tbilisi

Tbilisi is the capital and the largest city of Georgia, lying on the banks of the Mt'k'vari River. The name is derived from an early Georgian form T'pilisi and it was officially known as Tiflis until 1936...

, Yerevan

Yerevan

Yerevan is the capital and largest city of Armenia and one of the world's oldest continuously-inhabited cities. Situated along the Hrazdan River, Yerevan is the administrative, cultural, and industrial center of the country...

 and Delhi

Delhi

Delhi , officially National Capital Territory of Delhi , is the largest metropolis by area and the second-largest by population in India, next to Mumbai. It is the eighth largest metropolis in the world by population with 16,753,265 inhabitants in the Territory at the 2011 Census...

.

A signals-receiving station for BBC Monitoring is at Crowsley Park

Crowsley Park

Crowsley Park is a 160-acre country estate in South Oxfordshire, central-southern England, owned by the British Broadcasting Corporation .- Overview :...

 in South Oxfordshire

South Oxfordshire

South Oxfordshire is a local government district in Oxfordshire, England. Its council is based in Crowmarsh Gifford, just outside Wallingford....

, close to Caversham Park.

BBC Monitoring selects and translates information from radio

Radio

Radio is the transmission of signals through free space by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space...

, television

Television

Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...

, press

Newspaper

A newspaper is a scheduled publication containing news of current events, informative articles, diverse features and advertising. It usually is printed on relatively inexpensive, low-grade paper such as newsprint. By 2007, there were 6580 daily newspapers in the world selling 395 million copies a...

, news agencies and the Internet

Internet

The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...

 from 150 countries in more than 70 languages. Reporting produced by the service is used as Open Source Information by elements of the British Government and commercial customers.

History

The organisation was formed in 1939 to provide the British Government with access to foreign media

Mass media

Mass media refers collectively to all media technologies which are intended to reach a large audience via mass communication. Broadcast media transmit their information electronically and comprise of television, film and radio, movies, CDs, DVDs and some other gadgets like cameras or video consoles...

 and propaganda

Propaganda

Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....

. It provided the government with valuable information during World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

, particularly in places where foreign journalists were banned. The organisation played an important role in helping observers keep track of developments during the Cold War

Cold War

The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...

, the disintegration of the Iron Curtain

Iron Curtain

The concept of the Iron Curtain symbolized the ideological fighting and physical boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1989...

 and collapse of the Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

. Also monitored were the Yugoslav wars

Yugoslav wars

The Yugoslav Wars were a series of wars, fought throughout the former Yugoslavia between 1991 and 1995. The wars were complex: characterized by bitter ethnic conflicts among the peoples of the former Yugoslavia, mostly between Serbs on the one side and Croats and Bosniaks on the other; but also...

 and the Middle East

Middle East

The Middle East is a region that encompasses Western Asia and Northern Africa. It is often used as a synonym for Near East, in opposition to Far East...

.

Funding

Although administratively and editorially part of the BBC, until recently BBC Monitoring did not receive any funding from the licence fee; instead it was funded directly by its stakeholders as well as by subscriptions from official and commercial bodies throughout the world. The principal stakeholder is the Cabinet Office

Cabinet Office

The Cabinet Office is a department of the Government of the United Kingdom responsible for supporting the Prime Minister and Cabinet of the United Kingdom....

 and subscriptions are also received from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office

Foreign and Commonwealth Office

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office, commonly called the Foreign Office or the FCO is a British government department responsible for promoting the interests of the United Kingdom overseas, created in 1968 by merging the Foreign Office and the Commonwealth Office.The head of the FCO is the...

, the Ministry of Defence

Ministry of Defence (United Kingdom)

The Ministry of Defence is the United Kingdom government department responsible for implementation of government defence policy and is the headquarters of the British Armed Forces....

 and the BBC World Service

BBC World Service

The BBC World Service is the world's largest international broadcaster, broadcasting in 27 languages to many parts of the world via analogue and digital shortwave, internet streaming and podcasting, satellite, FM and MW relays...

. Other customers include other government departments, private sector and third sector bodies.

In the 2010 BBC licence fee settlement the BBC agreed to take on the government's funding of BBC Monitoring from 2013/2014, finding the £25 million required from the licence fee.

Reported on BBC News (17 January 2011), BBC Monitoring is to cut 72 posts following a £3 million cut in funding over the next two years.
The cuts to the £23.2m service, which is currently funded by the Cabinet Office, are part of the government's spending review outlined in October.
Director of BBC Monitoring, Chris Westcott, said: "Regrettably service cuts and post closures are inevitable given the scale of the cut in funding."
The Caversham-based service translates media reports from around the world.

The proposal is to cut £3m from the service's costs by closing the 72 posts - about 16% of its staff - but it expects to create 18 new posts.
Mr Westcott added that a period of consultation with staff on the plans were due to begin shortly.
The BBC agreed to finance Monitoring from 2013/14 as part of the 2010 licence fee settlement which froze the annual fee at £145.50 for six years.
The agreement also saw the corporation agree to take over the Foreign Office-funded World Service from 2014.

External links

• BBC Monitoring at BBC Online
• Media Reports at BBC News
  BBC News
  BBC News is the department of the British Broadcasting Corporation responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs. The department is the world's largest broadcast news organisation and generates about 120 hours of radio and television output each day, as well as online...