BBC News
Encyclopedia
BBC News is the department of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC
) 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 news coverage. The service maintains 44 foreign news bureaux and has correspondents in almost all of the world's 240 countries. Since 2004, the Director of BBC News has been Helen Boaden
.
The department's annual budget is £350 million; it has 3,500 staff, 2,000 of whom are journalists. Through the BBC English Regions
, BBC News has regional centres across England
as well as national news centres in Northern Ireland
, Scotland
, and Wales
. All regions and nations produce their own local news programmes and other current affairs and sport
programmes.
Radio and television operations are broadcast from BBC Television Centre
in West London
, though they will move to the newly refurbished Broadcasting House
in Central London in 2012. Television Centre houses all domestic, global, and online news divisions within one main newsroom. Parliamentary coverage is produced and broadcast from studios in Millbank
in London.
The BBC is a quasi-autonomous corporation authorised by Royal Charter, making it formally independent of government, and required to report impartially. It has been accused of political bias from across the political spectrum. Internationally, the BBC has been banned from reporting from within some countries which accuse the corporation of working to destabilise their governments.
In 2004, the BBC celebrated 50 years of television news broadcasts. BBC News journalists, cameramen, and programmes have won awards over the years for reporting, particularly from the Royal Television Society
. The BBC founded the BBC College of Journalism in 2005 as a part of the BBC Academy, following recommendations made after the Hutton Report.
broadcast its first radio bulletin from radio station 2LO
on 14 November 1922. Televised bulletins began 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 equivalent Television Newsreel
programme from January 1948. A weekly Children's Newsreel was inaugurated on 23 April 1950, 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. 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. That 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.
and presented by Richard Baker
, involved his providing narration off-screen while stills were shown. 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 visible facial movements would distract the viewer from the story. On-screen newsreaders were finally introduced a year later in 1955 – Kenneth Kendall
(the first to appear in vision), Robert Dougall
, and Richard Baker–three weeks before ITN's launch on 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
, a new documentary programme, 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.
On 28 October 1957, the Today programme
a morning radio programme was launched in central London on the Home Service
.
In 1958, Hugh Carleton Greene became head of News and Current Affairs. He set up a BBC study group whose findings, published in 1959, were critical of what the television news operation had become under his predecessor, Tahu Hole
. The report proposed 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.
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 were 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, Baron 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.
On 20 June 1960, Nan Winton
, the first female BBC network newsreader, appeared in vision. 19 September saw the start of the radio news and current affairs programme The Ten O'clock News.
Greene was a great innovator and 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
, a satirical programme hosted by David Frost
, was born at Lime Grove Studios, a product of the 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
.
The World at One
, a lunchtime news programme, began on 4 October 1965 on the then Home Service, and the year before News Review had started on television. News Review was a summary of the week's 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 superimposition ("super") 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
, a weekly news and current affairs programme, launched on what was 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, becoming 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.
However, much of the insert material was still in black and white, 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. Colour facilities at Alexandra Palace were technically very limited for the next eighteen months, as it had only one RCA
colour videotape
machine and, eventually two Pye plumbicon colour telecine
s–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.
This move to better technical facilities, but much smaller studios, allowed Newsroom and News Review to replace back projection with Colour-separation overlay. It also allowed all news output to be produced in PAL
colour, ahead of the development in all of BBC 1 from 15 November 1969 – and, like Alexandra Palace Studio A, these studios too were capable of operating in NTSC
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.
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On 14 September 1970 the first Nine O'Clock News
was broadcast on television. Robert Dougall presented 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 2045 as a response to the ratings achieved by ITV 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 appointed Angela Rippon
as its first female news presenter in 1975. 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 1750–it 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.
Also in the mid seventies, the late night news on BBC 2 was briefly renamed Newsnight, but this was not 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.
On 23 September 1974, a teletext
system which was developed to bring news content on television screens using text only was launched. Engineers originally began developing such a system to bring news to deaf viewers, but the system was expanded. The Ceefax
service is now much more diverse: it not only has subtitling for all channels, it also gives information 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.
; for which he won the "Royal Television Society
Cameraman of the Year" and a BAFTA nomination for his film – 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'm not allowed to say how many planes joined the raid, but 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 Outside broadcasting
team, and Kate Adie
reported live from Prince's Gate
, reporting which was nominated for BAFTA actuality coverage, but this time beaten by ITN for the 1980 award.
Newsnight
, the news and current affairs programme, 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
. 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 (striped) 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.
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 re-launch 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 large scale corporate 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.
and departure of Michael Buerk
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
moved 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. New programme titles were introduced on 16 February 2004 to match those of BBC News 24.
BBC News 24 and BBC World introduced a new style of presentation in December 2003, that was slightly altered on 5 July 2004 to mark 50 years of BBC Television News.
The individual positions of editor of the One and Six O'Clock News were replaced by a new daytime position in November 2005. Kevin Bakhurst became the first Controller of BBC News 24, replacing the position of editor. Amanda Farnsworth became daytime editor while Craig Oliver
was later named editor of the Ten O'Clock News. The bulletins also began to be simulcast
with News 24, as a way of pooling 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 bore similarities with the ITN-produced 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 and a weather summary.
As part of a long-term cost cutting programme, bulletins were renamed the BBC News at One, Six and Ten respectively in April 2008 while BBC News 24 was renamed BBC News and moved into the same studio as the bulletins at BBC Television Centre. BBC World was renamed BBC World News and regional news programmes were also updated with the new presentation style, designed by Lambie-Nairn
.
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.
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 the television current affairs department would be merged into a 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, partially by reducing employees and selling the Television Centre in 2013.
The various newsrooms of the BBC, television, radio, and online, were merged into a multimedia newsroom and programme making within the newsrooms was brought together to form the multimedia programme making departments. Peter Horrocks stated that the changes would bring about a greater efficiency 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 in Broadcasting House
, 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 during 2012. The new building will also become home to the BBC World Service
once the lease on Bush House expires.
A strategy review of the BBC in March 2010 confirmed that having "the best journalism in the world" would form one of five key editorial policies, as part of changes subject to public consultation and BBC Trust
approval.
, 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, a Persian language channel
followed 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
).
.
Many television and radio programmes are also available to view on the BBC iPlayer
service. The BBC News channel is also available to view 24 hours a day, while video and radio clips are also available within online news articles.
(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, including anti-BBC works like Truth Betrayed by W J West and The Truth Twisters by Richard Deacon.
The BBC's Editorial Guidelines on Politics and Public Policy state that whilst "the voices and opinions of opposition parties must be routinely aired and challenged", "the government of the day will often be the primary source of news".
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 John Page
, MP, who objected to Peter Snow
saying "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 labelled the "Belgrade Broadcasting Corporation" (suggesting favouritism towards the FR Yugoslavia government over ethnic Albanian
rebels) by British ministers, although Slobodan Milosević
(then FRY president) claimed that the BBC's coverage had been biased against his nation.
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 "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 did, as a result, attract informal criticism from the former Labour government, but his predecessor Andrew Marr
faced similar claims from the right because he was editor of The Independent
, liberal leaning newspaper before his appointment in 2000.
Mark Thompson
, Director-General of the BBC, admitted the organisation has been biased "towards the left". He said, "In the BBC I joined 30 years ago, there was, in much of current affairs, in terms of people's personal politics, which were quite vocal, a massive bias to the left".
. Hindu
groups in the United Kingdom have accused the BBC of anti-Hindu
bigotry and favouring Islamist groups that demonise the British Indian
minority.
In protest against the claimed biased coverage of the BBC, M. J. Akbar
, a journalist, boycotted the BBC to speak about the November 2008 Mumbai attacks. Stephen Pound MP has supported these claims, referring to the BBC's reporting of the terror attacks as "the worst sort of mealy mouthed posturing. It is desperation to avoid causing offence which ultimately causes more offence to everyone."
Writing for The Hindu
Business Line, Premen Addy criticised the BBC's reportage on South Asia as consistently anti-India and pro-Islamist, and that they underreport India's economic and social achievements, as well as political and diplomatic efforts, and disproportionately highlight and exaggerate problems in the country. In addition, Addy alludes to discrimination
against Indian anchors and reporters in favour of Pakistan
i and Bangladesh
i ones who are hostile to India.
Writing for the Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Alasdair Pinkerton analysed the coverage of India by the BBC since India's independence from British rule in 1947 until 2008. Pinkerton observes a tumultuous history involving allegations of anti-India bias in the BBC's reportage, particularly during the cold war
, and concludes that the BBC's coverage of South Asian geopolitics and economics shows a pervasive and hostile anti-India bias due to the BBC's alleged imperialist and neo-colonialist
stance.
Writing on western media bias
regarding South Asia
in the journal of the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses
, media analyst Ajai K. Rai strongly criticised the BBC for anti-India bias. He claims that there is a total lack of depth or fairness in the BBC's reportage on conflict zones in South Asia
, and that the BBC has, on one occasion, fabricated photographs while reporting on the Kashmir conflict
in order to make India look bad. He also writes that the BBC made false allegations that the Indian Army
stormed a sacred Muslim
shrine, the tomb of Hazrat Sheikh Noor-u-din Noorani in Charari Sharief
, and only retracted the claim after strong criticism from the media in India for several weeks.
'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 the Chairman's, 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 undoubtedly 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.
biases.
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 delegitimising the Jewish state and pumping oxygen into a dark old European hatred that dared not speak its name for the past half-century.". However two large independent studies, one conducted by Loughborough University and the other by Glasgow University's Media Group concluded that Israeli perspectives are given greater coverage.
Critics of the BBC argue that the Balen Report proves systematic bias against Israel in headline news programming. Daily Mail
and The Daily Telegraph
criticised the BBC for spending hundreds of thousands of British tax payers' pounds from preventing the report being released to the public.
Jeremy Bowen
, the Middle East Editor for BBC world news, was singled out specifically for bias by the BBC Trust
which concluded that he violated "BBC guidelines on accuracy and impartiality."
Noam Chomsky
, and David Edwards of Medialens.org tend to criticise 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 appointed by the BBC Trust
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." It notes that, "the failure to convey adequately the disparity in the Israeli and Palestinian experience, [reflects] the fact that one side is in control and the other lives under occupation".
Writing in the FT, Philip Stephens, one of the panellists, 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 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.
Tom Gross
accused the BBC of glorifying Hamas suicide bombers, and condemned its policy of inviting guests such as Jenny Tonge
and Tom Paulin
who have compared Israeli soldiers to Nazis. Writing for the BBC, Paulin said Israeli soldiers
should be "shot dead" like Hitler
's S.S, and said he could "understand how suicide bombers feel." According to Gross, Paulin and Tonge continue to be invited as regular guests, and they are among the most frequent contributors to their most widely-screened arts program.
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.
British lawyer and journalist Julie Burchill
has accused BBC of creating a "climate of fear" for British Jews
over its "excessive coverage" of Israel compared to other nations.
In a sixty-eight page study published by BBC watch examining BBC's coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict between January–June 2005, it concluded that "journalists have a predilection to denigrate Israel and to evoke sympathy for Palestinians." The researchers claimed that BBC is "fascinated with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict" based on a pictorial analysis: 15.80% of all pictures published on BBC world news are on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, compared to 0.51% for the Darfur conflict
.
. The BBC was banned in Burma (officially Myanmar) after BBC's coverage and commentary on anti-government protests there in September 2007. The ban was lifted 4 years later on September 2011. 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.
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
) 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 news coverage. The service maintains 44 foreign news bureaux and has correspondents in almost all of the world's 240 countries. Since 2004, the Director of BBC News has been Helen Boaden
Helen Boaden
Helen Boaden is the director of BBC News, part of the world’s biggest broadcast news operation . Boaden controls much of the BBC's domestic news output along with current affairs, including programmes such as Newsnight and Panorama.-Education:Boaden attended Colchester County High School for Girls...
.
The department's annual budget is £350 million; it has 3,500 staff, 2,000 of whom are journalists. Through the BBC English Regions
BBC English Regions
BBC English Regions is the division of the BBC responsible for local television, radio, web and teletext services in England. It is one of the BBC's four 'Nations' - the others being BBC Scotland, BBC Wales and BBC Northern Ireland....
, BBC News has regional centres across 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...
as well as national news centres in Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland is one of the four countries of the United Kingdom. Situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, it shares a border with the Republic of Ireland to the south and west...
, Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
, and Wales
Wales
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...
. All regions and nations produce their own local news programmes and other current affairs and sport
BBC Sport
BBC Sport is the sports division of the BBC. It became a fully dedicated division of the BBC in 2000. It incorporates programmes such as Match of the Day, Grandstand , Test Match Special, Ski Sunday, Rugby Special and coverage of Formula One motor racing, MotoGP and the Wimbledon Tennis...
programmes.
Radio and television operations are broadcast from BBC Television Centre
BBC Television Centre
BBC Television Centre at White City in West London is the headquarters of BBC Television. Officially opened on 29 June 1960, it remains one of the largest to this day; having featured over the years as backdrop to many BBC programmes, it is one of the most readily recognisable such facilities...
in West London
West (London sub region)
The West is a sub-region of the London Plan corresponding to the London Boroughs of Brent, Ealing, Hammersmith and Fulham, Harrow, Hillingdon and Hounslow. The sub region was established in 2004 and was adjusted in 2008 to include Kensington and Chelsea. The west has a population of 1.6 million and...
, though they will move to the newly refurbished Broadcasting House
Broadcasting House
Broadcasting House is the headquarters and registered office of the BBC in Portland Place and Langham Place, London.The building includes the BBC Radio Theatre from where music and speech programmes are recorded in front of a studio audience...
in Central London in 2012. Television Centre houses all domestic, global, and online news divisions within one main newsroom. Parliamentary coverage is produced and broadcast from studios in Millbank
Millbank
Millbank is an area of central London in the City of Westminster. Millbank is located by the River Thames, east of Pimlico and south of Westminster...
in London.
The BBC is a quasi-autonomous corporation authorised by Royal Charter, making it formally independent of government, and required to report impartially. It has been accused of political bias from across the political spectrum. Internationally, the BBC has been banned from reporting from within some countries which accuse the corporation of working to destabilise their governments.
In 2004, the BBC celebrated 50 years of television news broadcasts. BBC News journalists, cameramen, and programmes have won awards over the years for reporting, particularly from the Royal Television Society
Royal Television Society
The Royal Television Society is a British-based educational charity for the discussion, and analysis of television in all its forms, past, present and future. It is the oldest television society in the world...
. The BBC founded the BBC College of Journalism in 2005 as a part of the BBC Academy, following recommendations made after the Hutton Report.
The early years
The British Broadcasting CompanyBritish Broadcasting Company
The British Broadcasting Company Ltd was a British commercial company formed on 18 October 1922 by British and American electrical companies doing business in the United Kingdom and licensed by the British General Post Office...
broadcast its first radio bulletin from radio station 2LO
2LO
2LO was the second radio station to regularly broadcast in the United Kingdom . It began broadcasting on 11 May 1922, for one hour a day from the seventh floor of Marconi House in London's Strand...
on 14 November 1922. Televised bulletins began on 5 July 1954, broadcast from leased studios within Alexandra Palace
Alexandra Palace
Alexandra Palace is a building in North London, England. It stands in Alexandra Park, in an area between Hornsey, Muswell Hill and Wood Green...
in London. However, Gaumont British and Movietone cinema newsreels had been broadcast on the TV service since 1936 - with the BBC producing its own equivalent Television Newsreel
Television Newsreel
Television Newsreel was a British television programme, the first regular news programme to be made in the UK. Produced by the BBC and screened on the BBC Television Service from 1948 to 1954 at 7.30pm, it adapted the traditional cinema newsreel form for the television audience, covering news and...
programme from January 1948. A weekly Children's Newsreel was inaugurated on 23 April 1950, 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. 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. That 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– correspondents provided reports for both outlets–and that first bulletin, shown on 5 July 1954 on the then BBC television serviceBBC One
BBC One is the flagship television channel of the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It was launched on 2 November 1936 as the BBC Television Service, and was the world's first regular television service with a high level of image resolution...
and presented by Richard Baker
Richard Baker (broadcaster)
Richard Baker OBE is a British broadcaster best known as a newsreader for the BBC News from 1954 to 1982. He was a contemporary of Kenneth Kendall and Robert Dougall and was the first person to read the BBC Television News in 1954. At one time he lived in Barnet, North London...
, involved his providing narration off-screen while stills were shown. This was then followed by the customary Television Newsreel with a recorded commentary by John Snagge
John Snagge
John Derrick Mordaunt Snagge OBE was a long-time British newsreader and commentator on BBC Radio.Born in Chelsea, London, he was educated at Winchester College and Pembroke College, Oxford, where he obtained a degree in law. He then joined the BBC, taking up the position of assistant director at...
(and on other occasions by Andrew Timothy
Andrew Timothy
Andrew Timothy was an Anglican priest and BBC Radio announcer, who is best remembered for being the original announcer of the comedy series The Goon Show. Timothy announced for the BBC Home Service from 1947 to 1959. Later he became one of the first BBC television newsreaders from July to...
).
It was revealed that this had been due to producers fearing a newsreader
News presenter
A news presenter is a person who presents news during a news program in the format of a television show, on the radio or the Internet.News presenters can work in a radio studio, television studio and from remote broadcasts in the field especially weather...
with visible facial movements would distract the viewer from the story. On-screen newsreaders were finally introduced a year later in 1955 – Kenneth Kendall
Kenneth Kendall
Kenneth Kendall is a retired British broadcaster. He was a contemporary of Richard Baker and Robert Dougall...
(the first to appear in vision), Robert Dougall
Robert Dougall
Robert Dougall MBE was a British broadcaster and ornithologist, mainly known as a newsreader and announcer.-Television news:...
, and Richard Baker–three weeks before ITN's launch on 21 September 1955.
Mainstream television production had started to move out of Alexandra Palace in 1950 to larger premises – mainly at Lime Grove Studios
Lime Grove Studios
Lime Grove Studios was a film studio complex built by the Gaumont Film Company in 1915 situated in a street named Lime Grove, inShepherd's Bush, west London, north of Hammersmith and described by Gaumont as "the finest studio in Great Britain and the first building ever put up in this country...
in Shepherd's Bush
Shepherd's Bush
-Commerce:Commercial activity in Shepherd's Bush is now focused on the Westfield shopping centre next to Shepherd's Bush Central line station and on the many small shops which run along the northern side of the Green....
, west London – taking Current Affairs (then known as Talks Department) with it, and it was from here that the first Panorama
Panorama (TV series)
Panorama is a BBC Television current affairs documentary programme, which was first broadcast in 1953, and is the longest-running public affairs television programme in the world. Panorama has been presented by many well known BBC presenters, including Richard Dimbleby, Robin Day, David Dimbleby...
, a new documentary programme, was transmitted on 11 November 1953, with Richard Dimbleby
Richard Dimbleby
Richard Dimbleby CBE was an English journalist and broadcaster widely acknowledged as one of the greatest figures in British broadcasting history.-Early life:...
taking over as anchor in 1955. On 18 February 1957, the topical early-evening programme Tonight
Tonight (1957 TV series)
Tonight was a BBC television current affairs programme presented by Cliff Michelmore and broadcast in Britain live on weekday evenings from February 1957 to 1965. The producers were the future Controller of BBC1 Donald Baverstock and the future Director-General of the BBC Alasdair Milne...
hosted by Cliff Michelmore
Cliff Michelmore
Arthur Clifford "Cliff" Michelmore CBE is a British television presenter and producer. He is best known for the BBC television programme Tonight, which he presented from 1957 to 1965....
and designed to fill the airtime provided by the abolition of the Toddlers' Truce
Toddlers' Truce
The Toddlers' Truce was a piece of early British television scheduling policy that required transmissions to terminate for an hour each weekday between 6pm and 7pm. This was from the end of Children's TV to the start of the evening schedule, so that young children could be put to bed.-Background:It...
, was broadcast from Marconi's Viking Studio in St Mary Abbott's Place, Kensington
Kensington
Kensington is a district of west and central London, England within the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. An affluent and densely-populated area, its commercial heart is Kensington High Street, and it contains the well-known museum district of South Kensington.To the north, Kensington is...
– with the programme moving into a Lime Grove studio in 1960, where it already maintained its production office.
On 28 October 1957, the Today programme
Today programme
Today is BBC Radio 4's long-running early morning news and current affairs programme, now broadcast from 6.00 am to 9.00 am Monday to Friday, and 7.00 am to 9.00 am on Saturdays. It is also the most popular programme on Radio 4 and one of the BBC's most popular programmes across its radio networks...
a morning radio programme was launched in central London on the Home Service
BBC Home Service
The BBC Home Service was a British national radio station which broadcast from 1939 until 1967.-Development:Between the 1920s and the outbreak of The Second World War, the BBC had developed two nationwide radio services, the BBC National Programme and the BBC Regional Programme...
.
In 1958, Hugh Carleton Greene became head of News and Current Affairs. He set up a BBC study group whose findings, published in 1959, were critical of what the television news operation had become under his predecessor, Tahu Hole
Tahu Hole
Tahu Ronald Charles Pearce Hole CBE was a New Zealand born journalist who worked as the BBC's television news editor during the period immediately following the Second World War.-Early life and work:...
. The report proposed 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
BBC Television
BBC Television is a service of the British Broadcasting Corporation. The corporation, which has operated in the United Kingdom under the terms of a Royal Charter since 1927, has produced television programmes from its own studios since 1932, although the start of its regular service of 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 were 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, Baron Birt
John Birt, Baron Birt
John Birt, Baron Birt is a former Director-General of the BBC who was in the post from 1992 to 2000.After a successful career in commercial television, first at Granada and then at LWT, Birt was brought in as deputy director-general of the BBC in 1987 for his current affairs expertise...
, 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.
On 20 June 1960, Nan Winton
Nan Winton
Nan Winton is a British broadcaster, best known for being the first female national newsreader on BBC television.She was a BBC TV continuity announcer from 1958–61 and also an experienced journalist who had worked on Panorama and Town and Around...
, the first female BBC network newsreader, appeared in vision. 19 September saw the start of the radio news and current affairs programme The Ten O'clock News.
Greene was a great innovator and asked Ned Sherrin
Ned Sherrin
Edward George "Ned" Sherrin CBE was an English broadcaster, author and stage director. He qualified as a barrister and then worked in independent television before joining the BBC...
, 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
That Was The Week That Was
That Was The Week That Was, also known as TW3, is a satirical television comedy programme that was shown on BBC Television in 1962 and 1963. It was devised, produced and directed by Ned Sherrin and presented by David Frost...
, a satirical programme hosted by David Frost
David Frost (broadcaster)
Sir David Paradine Frost, OBE is a British journalist, comedian, writer, media personality and daytime TV game show host best known for his two decades as host of Through the Keyhole and serious interviews with various political figures, the most notable being Richard Nixon...
, was born at Lime Grove Studios, a product of the Current Affairs department rather than Light Entertainment.
BBC 2
BBC Two
BBC Two is the second television channel operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It covers a wide range of subject matter, but tending towards more 'highbrow' programmes than the more mainstream and popular BBC One. Like the BBC's other domestic TV and radio...
started transmission on 20 April 1964, and with it came a new news programme for that channel, Newsroom
Newsroom (BBC programme)
Newsroom was the BBC2 channel's main news programme during the 1960s and early 1970s.The programme began on the day BBC2 started transmission, 20 April 1964 and continued until 1973. The programme was initially broadcast late at night but was moved to a 7.30 - 8.00pm time-slot in 1968...
.
The World at One
The World At One
The World at One, or WATO for short, is BBC Radio 4's long-running lunchtime news and current affairs programme, which is broadcast from 1pm to 1:30pm from Monday to Friday. The programme describes itself as "Britain's leading political programme. With a reputation for rigorous and original...
, a lunchtime news programme, began on 4 October 1965 on the then Home Service, and the year before News Review had started on television. News Review was a summary of the week's 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 superimposition ("super") had to be produced on paper or card, synchronised manually to studio and news footage
Footage
In filmmaking and video production, footage is the raw, unedited material as it had been originally filmed by movie camera or recorded by a video camera which usually must be edited to create a motion picture, video clip, television show or similar completed work...
, 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
Ceefax
Ceefax is the BBC's teletext information service transmitted via the analogue signal, started in 1974 and will run until April 2012 for Pages from Ceefax, while the actual interactive service will run until 24 October 2012, in-line with the digital switchover.-History:During the late 60s, engineer...
subtitling (a similar format), and the signing of such programmes as See Hear
See Hear
See Hear is a weekly magazine programme for deaf and hard of hearing people in the UK, broadcast on Wednesday afternoons at 1pm. The programme focuses on the British and the worldwide deaf community and covers a broad range of topics from areas such as education, deaf people's rights, technology...
(from 1981).
On Sunday 17 September 1967 The World This Weekend
The World This Weekend
The World This Weekend was launched on 17 September 1967. It is a weekly news and current affairs programme broadcast from 1pm to 1:30pm on BBC Radio 4 every Sunday, essentially the Sunday version of The World at One....
, a weekly news and current affairs programme, launched on what was then Home Service, but soon-to-be Radio 4
BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 is a British domestic radio station, operated and owned by the BBC, that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history. It replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. The station controller is currently Gwyneth Williams, and the...
.
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, becoming 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
Palace of Westminster
The Palace of Westminster, also known as the Houses of Parliament or Westminster Palace, is the meeting place of the two houses of the Parliament of the United Kingdom—the House of Lords and the House of Commons...
happenings) were "colourised" shortly after.
However, much of the insert material was still in black and white, as initially only a part of the film coverage shot in and around London was on colour reversal film stock
Film stock
Film stock is photographic film on which filmmaking of motion pictures are shot and reproduced. The equivalent in television production is video tape.-1889–1899:...
, and all regional and many international contributions were still in black and white. Colour facilities at Alexandra Palace were technically very limited for the next eighteen months, as it had only one RCA
RCA
RCA Corporation, founded as the Radio Corporation of America, was an American electronics company in existence from 1919 to 1986. The RCA trademark is currently owned by the French conglomerate Technicolor SA through RCA Trademark Management S.A., a company owned by Technicolor...
colour videotape
Videotape
A videotape is a recording of images and sounds on to magnetic tape as opposed to film stock or random access digital media. Videotapes are also used for storing scientific or medical data, such as the data produced by an electrocardiogram...
machine and, eventually two Pye plumbicon colour telecine
Telecine
Telecine is transferring motion picture film into video and is performed in a color suite. The term is also used to refer to the equipment used in the post-production process....
s–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
Nationwide (TV series)
Nationwide was a BBC News and Current affairs television programme broadcast on BBC One each weekday following the early evening news. It followed a magazine format, combining political analysis and discussion with consumer affairs, light entertainment and sports reporting...
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 Colour-separation overlay. It also allowed all news output to be produced in PAL
PAL
PAL, short for Phase Alternating Line, is an analogue television colour encoding system used in broadcast television systems in many countries. Other common analogue television systems are NTSC and SECAM. This page primarily discusses the PAL colour encoding system...
colour, ahead of the development in all of BBC 1 from 15 November 1969 – and, like Alexandra Palace Studio A, these studios too were capable of operating in NTSC
NTSC
NTSC, named for the National Television System Committee, is the analog television system that is used in most of North America, most of South America , Burma, South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines, and some Pacific island nations and territories .Most countries using the NTSC standard, as...
for the US, Canada, and Japan as the BBC occasionally provided facilities for overseas broadcasters. During the 1960s satellite communication
Communications satellite
A communications satellite is an artificial satellite stationed in space for the purpose of telecommunications...
had become not only possible, but popular, however colour field-store standards converters
Television standards conversion
Television standards conversion is the process of changing one type of TV system to another. The most common is from NTSC to PAL or the other way around. This is done so TV programs in one nation may be viewed in a nation with a different standard...
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
BBC Nine O'Clock News
The BBC Nine O'Clock News was the flagship BBC News programme launched on 14 September 1970, which ran until 15 October 2000, when it was controversially moved to BBC News at Ten....
was broadcast on television. Robert Dougall presented the first week from studio N1 – described by The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
as "a sort of polystyrene padded cell"--the bulletin having been moved from the earlier time of 2045 as a response to the ratings achieved by ITV 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 appointed Angela Rippon
Angela Rippon
Angela M. Rippon, OBE, born 12 October 1944, Plymouth, Devon, England, is an English television journalist, newsreader, writer and presenter. Rippon presented radio and television news programmes in South West England before moving to BBC One's Nine O'Clock News, becoming a regular presenter in 1975...
as its first female news presenter in 1975. Her work outside the news was controversial for the time, appearing on the Morecambe and Wise
Morecambe and Wise
Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise, usually referred to as Morecambe and Wise, or Eric and Ernie, were a British comic double act, working in variety, radio, film and most successfully in television. Their partnership lasted from 1941 until Morecambe's death in 1984...
show singing and dancing.
The early evening news on BBC 1 remained at its regular time of 1750–it 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
Newsround
Newsround is a BBC children's news programme, which has run continuously since 4 April 1972, and was one of the world's first television news magazines aimed specifically at children...
, 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.
Also in the mid seventies, the late night news on BBC 2 was briefly renamed Newsnight, but this was not 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
PM (Radio 4)
PM, sometimes referred to as the PM programme to avoid ambiguity, is BBC Radio 4's long-running early evening news and current affairs programme.-Broadcast times:...
and The World Tonight
The World Tonight
The World Tonight is a British current affairs radio programme broadcast on BBC Radio 4, every weekday evening, which started out as an extension of the 10pm news. It features news, analysis and comment on domestic and world issues...
as part of the plan for the station to become a "wholly speech network". Newsbeat
Newsbeat
Newsbeat is the flagship news programme on BBC Radio 1 and BBC Radio 1Xtra. Newsbeat is produced by BBC News but differs from the BBC's other news programmes in its remit to provide news tailored for a specifically younger audience....
launched as the news service on Radio 1
BBC Radio 1
BBC Radio 1 is a British national radio station operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation which also broadcasts internationally, specialising in current popular music and chart hits throughout the day. Radio 1 provides alternative genres after 7:00pm including electronic dance, hip hop, rock...
on 10 September 1973.
On 23 September 1974, a teletext
Teletext
Teletext is a television information retrieval service developed in the United Kingdom in the early 1970s. It offers a range of text-based information, typically including national, international and sporting news, weather and TV schedules...
system which was developed to bring news content on television screens using text only was launched. Engineers originally began developing such a system to bring news to deaf viewers, but the system was expanded. The Ceefax
Ceefax
Ceefax is the BBC's teletext information service transmitted via the analogue signal, started in 1974 and will run until April 2012 for Pages from Ceefax, while the actual interactive service will run until 24 October 2012, in-line with the digital switchover.-History:During the late 60s, engineer...
service is now much more diverse: it not only has subtitling for all channels, it also gives information such as weather, flight times and film reviews.
The decline in shooting film for news broadcasts became more prevalent, as ENG
Electronic news gathering
ENG is a broadcasting industry acronym which stands for electronic news gathering. It can mean anything from a lone broadcast journalist reporter taking a single professional video camera out to shoot a story, to an entire television crew taking a production truck or satellite truck on location...
equipment became less cumbersome – the BBC's first attempts had been using a Philips
Philips
Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V. , more commonly known as Philips, is a multinational Dutch electronics company....
colour camera with backpack base station and separate portable Sony
Sony
, commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate measured by revenues....
U-matic
U-matic
U-matic is an analog recording videocassette format first shown by Sony in prototype in October 1969, and introduced to the market in September 1971. It was among the first video formats to contain the videotape inside a cassette, as opposed to the various Reel-to-Reel or open-reel formats of the...
recorder in the latter half of the decade.
1980s
By 1982 ENG technology had become stable enough that an Ikegami camera was used by Bernard Hesketh to cover the Falklands WarFalklands War
The Falklands War , also called the Falklands Conflict or Falklands Crisis, was fought in 1982 between Argentina and the United Kingdom over the disputed Falkland Islands and South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands...
; for which he won the "Royal Television Society
Royal Television Society
The Royal Television Society is a British-based educational charity for the discussion, and analysis of television in all its forms, past, present and future. It is the oldest television society in the world...
Cameraman of the Year" and a BAFTA nomination for his film – 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
Brian Hanrahan
Brian Hanrahan was the Diplomatic Editor for BBC News and a well known correspondent. He also presented The World at One on BBC Radio Four and appeared on regular cover shifts on the rolling news channel BBC News 24...
's reporting where he coined the phrase "I'm not allowed to say how many planes joined the raid, but 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
Iranian Embassy Siege
The Iranian Embassy siege took place from 30 April to 5 May 1980, after a group of six armed men stormed the Iranian embassy in South Kensington, London. The gunmen took 26 people hostage—mostly embassy staff, but several visitors and a police officer, who had been guarding the embassy, were also...
had been shot electronically by the BBC Television News Outside broadcasting
Outside broadcasting
Outside broadcasting is the electronic field production of television or radio programmes from a mobile remote broadcast television studio. Professional video camera and microphone signals come into the production truck for processing, recording and possibly transmission...
team, and Kate Adie
Kate Adie
Kathryn "Kate" Adie , OBE , is a British journalist. Her most high-profile role was that of chief news correspondent for BBC News, during which time she became well known for reporting from war zones around the world...
reported live from Prince's Gate
South Kensington
South Kensington is a district in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in London. It is a built-up area located 2.4 miles west south-west of Charing Cross....
, reporting which was nominated for BAFTA actuality coverage, but this time beaten by ITN for the 1980 award.
Newsnight
Newsnight
Newsnight is a BBC Television current affairs programme noted for its in-depth analysis and often robust cross-examination of senior politicians. Jeremy Paxman has been its main presenter for over two decades....
, the news and current affairs programme, 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
Moira Stuart
Moira Clare Ruby Stuart OBE is a British journalist who was the first African-Caribbean female newsreader on British television...
became the first Afro-Caribbean female newsreader to appear on British television.
The first BBC breakfast television programme, Breakfast Time
Breakfast Time
Breakfast Time was British television's first national breakfast show, beating TV-am's flagship programme Good Morning Britain to the air by two weeks.The show was revolutionary for the time...
also launched during the 1980s, on 17 January 1983 from Lime Grove Studio E and two weeks before its ITV
ITV
ITV is the major commercial public service TV network in the United Kingdom. Launched in 1955 under the auspices of the Independent Television Authority to provide competition to the BBC, it is also the oldest commercial network in the UK...
rival TV-am
TV-am
TV-am was a breakfast television station that broadcast to the United Kingdom from 1 February 1983 to 31 December 1992. It made history by being the first national operator of a commercial television franchise at breakfast-time , and broadcast every day of the week for most or all of the period...
. Frank Bough
Frank Bough
Frank Bough is a retired British television presenter who is best known as the former host of BBC sports and current affairs shows including Grandstand, Nationwide and Breakfast Time, which he fronted alongside Selina Scott.-Early life:...
, Selina Scott
Selina Scott
Selina Scott is a British newsreader, journalist, television producer and presenter.- Background and early life :Scott was born in Scarborough, North Riding of Yorkshire in 1951, the eldest of five children...
, and Nick Ross
Nick Ross
Nick Ross is a British radio and television presenter across a wide range of factual programmes and during the 1980s and 90s he was one of the most ubiquitous of British broadcasters, but he is best known for his long-running co-hosting of the BBC TV show Crimewatch which he left on 2 July 2007...
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 (striped) 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
During the 1990s, a wider range of services began to be offered by BBC News, with the split of BBC World Service TelevisionBBC World Service Television
BBC World Service Television, often abbreviated to WSTV, was the name given to two of the BBC's international satellite television channels between 1991 and 1995. It was the BBC's first foray into worldwide television broadcasting...
to become BBC World
BBC World
BBC World News is the BBC's international news and current affairs television channel. It has the largest audience of any BBC channel in the world...
(news and current affairs), and BBC Prime
BBC Prime
BBC Prime was the BBC's general entertainment TV channel in Europe and the Middle East from 30 January 1995 until 11 November 2009, when it was replaced by BBC Entertainment.-Launch:...
(light entertainment). Content for a 24 hour news channel was thus required, followed in 1997 with the launch of domestic equivalent BBC News 24
BBC News 24
BBC News is the BBC's 24-hour rolling news television network in the United Kingdom. The channel launched as BBC News 24 on 9 November 1997 at 17:30 as part of the BBC's foray into digital domestic television channels, becoming the first competitor to Sky News, which had been running since 1989...
. 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
BBC Television Centre
BBC Television Centre at White City in West London is the headquarters of BBC Television. Officially opened on 29 June 1960, it remains one of the largest to this day; having featured over the years as backdrop to many BBC programmes, it is one of the most readily recognisable such facilities...
.
New "Silicon Graphics
Silicon Graphics
Silicon Graphics, Inc. was a manufacturer of high-performance computing solutions, including computer hardware and software, founded in 1981 by Jim Clark...
" technology came into use in 1993 for a re-launch 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
BBC coat of arms
The coat of arms of the BBC was adopted in March 1927 to represent the purpose and values of the corporation. While the coat of arms is now in relative obscurity — it does not appear on BBC programmes for example - this was not always the case. The coat of arms was modified in 1986 when the...
was the centrepiece of the programme titles until the large scale corporate 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
BBC News Online
BBC News Online is the website of BBC News, the division of the BBC responsible for newsgathering and production. The website is the most popular news website in the United Kingdom and forms a major part of BBC 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
Newyddion
Newyddion is a Welsh-language news programme consisting of Welsh, UK, and international news, produced daily by BBC Cymru Wales and broadcast on S4C.-Overview:...
, the main news programme of Welsh language
Welsh language
Welsh is a member of the Brythonic branch of the Celtic languages spoken natively in Wales, by some along the Welsh border in England, and in Y Wladfa...
channel S4C
S4C
S4C , currently branded as S4/C, is a Welsh television channel broadcast from the capital, Cardiff. The first television channel to be aimed specifically at a Welsh-speaking audience, it is the fifth oldest British television channel .The channel - initially broadcast on...
, 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
The retirement of Peter SissonsPeter Sissons
Peter George Sissons is a broadcast journalist in the United Kingdom. He was the presenter of the BBC Nine O'Clock News and the BBC News at Ten between 1993 and 2003, as earlier a newscaster for ITN, providing bulletins on ITV and Channel 4. He is also a former presenter of the BBC's Question Time...
and departure of Michael Buerk
Michael Buerk
Michael Duncan Buerk is a BBC journalist and newsreader, most famous for his reporting of the Ethiopian famine on 23 October 1984, which inspired the Band Aid charity record.-Early life:...
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
George Alagiah
George Maxwell Alagiah OBE is a British newsreader, journalist and television news presenter.Since 3 December 2007, he has been the sole presenter of the BBC News at Six and has also been the main presenter of GMT on BBC World News since its launch on 1 February 2010...
and Sophie Raworth
Sophie Raworth
Sophie Jane Raworth is an English newsreader and journalist who works for British broadcaster the BBC. She is the main presenter of the BBC News at One, presenting Tuesday to Friday, and regularly appears on the BBC News at Six and occasionally on BBC News at Ten.-Early life:Born in Surrey to a...
after Huw Edwards
Huw Edwards (journalist)
Huw Edwards is a BAFTA award-winning Welsh journalist, presenter and newsreader.He is a news presenter for BBC News in the United Kingdom. Edwards presents Britain's most watched news programme, BBC News at Ten, which is also the corporation's flagship news broadcast...
and Fiona Bruce
Fiona Bruce
Fiona Elizabeth Bruce is a British journalist, newsreader and television presenter. Since joining the BBC in 1989, she has gone on to present many flagship programmes for the corporation including the BBC News at Six, BBC News at Ten, Crimewatch, Call My Bluff and, most recently, Antiques Roadshow...
moved 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. New programme titles were introduced on 16 February 2004 to match those of BBC News 24.
BBC News 24 and BBC World introduced a new style of presentation in December 2003, that was slightly altered on 5 July 2004 to mark 50 years of BBC Television News.
The individual positions of editor of the One and Six O'Clock News were replaced by a new daytime position in November 2005. Kevin Bakhurst became the first Controller of BBC News 24, replacing the position of editor. Amanda Farnsworth became daytime editor while Craig Oliver
Craig Oliver (media executive)
Craig Stewart Oliver is a British news editor, producer and media executive, and the current Head of Communications for British Prime Minister David Cameron...
was later named editor of the Ten O'Clock News. The bulletins also began to be simulcast
Simulcast
Simulcast, shorthand for "simultaneous broadcast", refers to programs or events broadcast across more than one medium, or more than one service on the same medium, at the same time. For example, Absolute Radio is simulcast on both AM and on satellite radio, and the BBC's Prom concerts are often...
with News 24, as a way of pooling 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
Barco
Barco N.V. is a display hardware manufacturer specialising in video projectors, LCD projectors, DLP projectors, LCoS projectors, LED displays, video walls, flat panel displays, automated luminaires, digital lighting and lighting controls....
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 bore similarities with the ITN-produced ITV News
ITV News
ITV News is the branding of news programmes on the British television network ITV. Since 1955, ITV's news bulletins have been produced by Independent Television News . The channel's news coverage has won awards from the Royal Television Society, Emmy Awards and BAFTAs. Between 2004 and 2008, the...
in 2004, though ITN uses a CSO Virtual studio
Virtual studio
The term virtual studio can refer to any number of technological tools which seek to simulate a physical television and/or movie studio. One such use of the term follows....
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
60 Seconds
60 Seconds is the news programme running between shows on BBC Three. The weekday presenter is Sam Naz with weekend bulletins presented by Claudia-Liza Armah....
on BBC Three
BBC Three
BBC Three is a television network from the BBC broadcasting via digital cable, terrestrial, IPTV and satellite platforms. The channel's target audience includes those in the 16-34 year old age group, and has the purpose of providing "innovative" content to younger audiences, focusing on new talent...
, but also includes headlines from the various BBC regions and a weather summary.
As part of a long-term cost cutting programme, bulletins were renamed the BBC News at One, Six and Ten respectively in April 2008 while BBC News 24 was renamed BBC News and moved into the same studio as the bulletins at BBC Television Centre. BBC World was renamed BBC World News and regional news programmes were also updated with the new presentation style, designed by Lambie-Nairn
Lambie-Nairn
Lambie-Nairn is an international branding agency within the WPP Group, headquartered in London with offices in Munich, Madrid, Abu Dhabi and Prague...
.
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 BoadenHelen Boaden
Helen Boaden is the director of BBC News, part of the world’s biggest broadcast news operation . Boaden controls much of the BBC's domestic news output along with current affairs, including programmes such as Newsnight and Panorama.-Education:Boaden attended Colchester County High School for Girls...
remains Director of BBC News, reporting to Mark Byford
Mark Byford
Mark Byford was Deputy Director General of the British Broadcasting Corporation and head of BBC Journalism from 2004-2011. He chaired the BBC Journalism Board and had overall responsibility for the world’s largest and most trusted news organisation, and all its radio, television and interactive...
, head of the new group and Deputy Director-General.
It was announced on 18 October 2007 as part of Mark Thompson
Mark Thompson
Mark John Thompson is Director-General of the BBC, a post he has held since 2004, and a former chief executive of Channel 4...
's new six year plan, Delivering Creative Future, that the television current affairs department would be merged into a new "News Programmes" department. The Director General's
Director-General of the BBC
The Director-General of the British Broadcasting Corporation is chief executive and editor-in-chief of the BBC.The position was formerly appointed by the Board of Governors of the BBC and is now appointed by the BBC Trust....
announcement, in response to a £2billion shortfall in funding, would deliver "a smaller, but fitter, BBC" in the digital age, partially by reducing employees and selling the Television Centre in 2013.
The various newsrooms of the BBC, television, radio, and online, were merged into a multimedia newsroom and programme making within the newsrooms was brought together to form the multimedia programme making departments. Peter Horrocks stated that the changes would bring about a greater efficiency 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 in Broadcasting House
Broadcasting House
Broadcasting House is the headquarters and registered office of the BBC in Portland Place and Langham Place, London.The building includes the BBC Radio Theatre from where music and speech programmes are recorded in front of a studio audience...
, Portland Place, Central London
Central London
Central London is the innermost part of London, England. There is no official or commonly accepted definition of its area, but its characteristics are understood to include a high density built environment, high land values, an elevated daytime population and a concentration of regionally,...
. 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 during 2012. The new building will also become home to 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...
once the lease on Bush House expires.
A strategy review of the BBC in March 2010 confirmed that having "the best journalism in the world" would form one of five key editorial policies, as part of changes subject to public consultation and BBC Trust
BBC Trust
The BBC Trust is the governing body of the British Broadcasting Corporation. It is operationally independent of BBC management and external bodies, and aims to act in the best interests of licence fee payers....
approval.
Television
BBC News is responsible for the main newscasts on BBC One as well as other programmes on BBC TwoBBC Two
BBC Two is the second television channel operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It covers a wide range of subject matter, but tending towards more 'highbrow' programmes than the more mainstream and popular BBC One. Like the BBC's other domestic TV and radio...
, BBC Three
BBC Three
BBC Three is a television network from the BBC broadcasting via digital cable, terrestrial, IPTV and satellite platforms. The channel's target audience includes those in the 16-34 year old age group, and has the purpose of providing "innovative" content to younger audiences, focusing on new talent...
, BBC Four
BBC Four
BBC Four is a British television network operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation and available to digital television viewers on Freeview, IPTV, satellite and cable....
, the BBC News Channel, and the provision of 22 hours of programming for BBC World News. Coverage for BBC Parliament
BBC Parliament
BBC Parliament is a British television channel from the BBC. Its remit is to make accessible to all the work of the parliamentary and legislative bodies of the United Kingdom and the European Parliament...
is carried out on behalf on the BBC at Millbank
Millbank
Millbank is an area of central London in the City of Westminster. Millbank is located by the River Thames, east of Pimlico and south of Westminster...
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
Ceefax
Ceefax is the BBC's teletext information service transmitted via the analogue signal, started in 1974 and will run until April 2012 for Pages from Ceefax, while the actual interactive service will run until 24 October 2012, in-line with the digital switchover.-History:During the late 60s, engineer...
teletext
Teletext
Teletext is a television information retrieval service developed in the United Kingdom in the early 1970s. It offers a range of text-based information, typically including national, international and sporting news, weather and TV schedules...
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
BBC One
BBC One is the flagship television channel of the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It was launched on 2 November 1936 as the BBC Television Service, and was the world's first regular television service with a high level of image resolution...
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
Newsbeat
Newsbeat is the flagship news programme on BBC Radio 1 and BBC Radio 1Xtra. Newsbeat is produced by BBC News but differs from the BBC's other news programmes in its remit to provide news tailored for a specifically younger audience....
. The theme has had several changes since 1999.
The BBC Arabic Television
BBC Arabic Television
BBC Arabic Television is a news and information television channel broadcast to the Middle East by the BBC. It was launched at 0956 GMT on 11 March 2008. The service was announced in October 2005 and was to start broadcasting in Autumn 2007, but was delayed...
news channel launched on 11 March 2008, a Persian language channel
BBC Persian Television
BBC Persian Television is the BBC's Persian language news channel that was launched on 14 January 2009. The service can be accessed through satellite television, and is aimed at the 100 million Persian speakers in Iran, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan....
followed 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
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...
and funded from a grant-in-aid from the British Foreign 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...
(and not the television licence
Television licensing in the United Kingdom
In the United Kingdom and the Crown Dependencies, any household watching or recording live television transmissions is required to purchase a television licence every year. As of 2010, this costs £145.50 for colour and £49.00 for black and white. The licence is required to receive any live...
).
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. BBC Radio News is a patron of The Radio AcademyRadio Academy
The Radio Academy is a registered charity that is dedicated to 'the encouragement, recognition and promotion of excellence in UK broadcasting and audio production'....
.
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 comprehensive international news coverage as well as entertainment, sport, science, and political news.Many television and radio programmes are also available to view on the BBC iPlayer
BBC iPlayer
BBC iPlayer, commonly shortened to iPlayer, is an internet television and radio service, developed by the BBC to extend its former RealPlayer-based and other streamed video clip content to include whole TV shows....
service. The BBC News channel is also available to view 24 hours a day, while video and radio clips are also available within online news articles.
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. This political objectivity is sometimes questioned. For instance, The Daily TelegraphThe Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. The newspaper was founded by Arthur B...
(3 August 2005) carried a letter from the KGB
KGB
The KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...
defector Oleg Gordievsky
Oleg Gordievsky
Oleg Antonovich Gordievsky , CMG , is a former Colonel of the KGB and KGB Resident-designate and bureau chief in London, who was a secret agent of the British Secret Intelligence Service from 1974 to 1985.-Early career:Oleg Gordievsky attended the Moscow State Institute of International...
, referring to it as "The Red Service". Books have been written on the subject, including anti-BBC works like Truth Betrayed by W J West and The Truth Twisters by Richard Deacon.
The BBC's Editorial Guidelines on Politics and Public Policy state that whilst "the voices and opinions of opposition parties must be routinely aired and challenged", "the government of the day will often be the primary source of news".
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
Newsnight
Newsnight is a BBC Television current affairs programme noted for its in-depth analysis and often robust cross-examination of senior politicians. Jeremy Paxman has been its main presenter for over two decades....
at the start of the Falklands War
Falklands War
The Falklands War , also called the Falklands Conflict or Falklands Crisis, was fought in 1982 between Argentina and the United Kingdom over the disputed Falkland Islands and South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands...
in 1982 was described as "almost treasonable" by John Page
John Page (UK politician)
Sir Arthur John Page , known as Sir John Page, was a British Conservative politician.Page was educated at Harrow and Magdalene College, Cambridge...
, MP, who objected to Peter Snow
Peter Snow
Peter Snow, CBE is a British television and radio presenter. He is the grandson of First World War general Sir Thomas D'Oyly Snow, and cousin of Jon Snow, the main presenter of Channel 4 News, nephew of schoolmaster and bishop George D'Oyly Snow, and the brother-in-law of historian-writer Margaret...
saying "if we believe the British".
During the first Gulf War
Gulf War
The Persian Gulf War , commonly referred to as simply the Gulf War, was a war waged by a U.N.-authorized coalition force from 34 nations led by the United States, against Iraq in response to Iraq's invasion and annexation of Kuwait.The war is also known under other names, such as the First Gulf...
, critics of the BBC took to using the satirical name "Baghdad Broadcasting Corporation". During the Kosovo War
Kosovo War
The term Kosovo War or Kosovo conflict was two sequential, and at times parallel, armed conflicts in Kosovo province, then part of FR Yugoslav Republic of Serbia; from early 1998 to 1999, there was an armed conflict initiated by the ethnic Albanian "Kosovo Liberation Army" , who sought independence...
, the BBC were labelled the "Belgrade Broadcasting Corporation" (suggesting favouritism towards the FR Yugoslavia government over ethnic Albanian
Albanians
Albanians are a nation and ethnic group native to Albania and neighbouring countries. They speak the Albanian language. More than half of all Albanians live in Albania and Kosovo...
rebels) by British ministers, although Slobodan Milosević
Slobodan Milošević
Slobodan Milošević was President of Serbia and Yugoslavia. He served as the President of Socialist Republic of Serbia and Republic of Serbia from 1989 until 1997 in three terms and as President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia from 1997 to 2000...
(then FRY president) claimed that the BBC's coverage had been biased against his nation.
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 "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
Greg Dyke
Gregory "Greg" Dyke is a British media executive, journalist and broadcaster. Since the 1960s, Dyke has a long career in the UK in print and then broadcast journalism. He is credited with introducing 'tabloid' television to British broadcasting, and reviving the ratings of TV-am...
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
Tony Blair
Anthony Charles Lynton Blair is a former British Labour Party politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2 May 1997 to 27 June 2007. He was the Member of Parliament for Sedgefield from 1983 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007...
. The BBC's current Political Editor, Nick Robinson
Nick Robinson
Nicholas Anthony "Nick" Robinson is a British journalist and political editor for the BBC. Robinson was interested in politics from a young age, and went on to study a Philosophy, Politics, and Economics degree at Oxford University, where he was also President of the Oxford University Conservative...
, was some years ago a chairman of the Young Conservatives and did, as a result, attract informal criticism from the former Labour government, but his predecessor Andrew Marr
Andrew Marr
Andrew William Stevenson Marr is a Scottish journalist and political commentator. He edited The Independent for two years until May 1998, and was political editor of BBC News from 2000 until 2005....
faced similar claims from the right because he was editor of The Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
, liberal leaning newspaper before his appointment in 2000.
Mark Thompson
Mark Thompson
Mark John Thompson is Director-General of the BBC, a post he has held since 2004, and a former chief executive of Channel 4...
, Director-General of the BBC, admitted the organisation has been biased "towards the left". He said, "In the BBC I joined 30 years ago, there was, in much of current affairs, in terms of people's personal politics, which were quite vocal, a massive bias to the left".
India
In 2008, the BBC was criticised by some for referring to the terrorists who carried out the November 2008 Mumbai attacks as "gunmen". This follows from India that the BBC has an Indophobic bias, the result of a culturally ingrained racism against Indians arising from the British RajBritish Raj
British Raj was the British rule in the Indian subcontinent between 1858 and 1947; The term can also refer to the period of dominion...
. Hindu
Hindu
Hindu refers to an identity associated with the philosophical, religious and cultural systems that are indigenous to the Indian subcontinent. As used in the Constitution of India, the word "Hindu" is also attributed to all persons professing any Indian religion...
groups in the United Kingdom have accused the BBC of anti-Hindu
Anti-Hindu
Anti-Hindu prejudice is a negative perception or religious intolerance against the practice and practitioners of Hinduism. Anti-Hindu sentiments have been expressed by Muslims in Pakistan, Bangladesh, leading to significant persecution of Hindus in those regions, such as the 1971 Bangladesh...
bigotry and favouring Islamist groups that demonise the British Indian
British Indian
The term British Indian refers to citizens of the United Kingdom whose ancestral roots lie in India. This includes people born in the UK who are of Indian descent, and Indian-born people who have migrated to the UK...
minority.
In protest against the claimed biased coverage of the BBC, M. J. Akbar
M. J. Akbar
Mobashar Jawed "M.J." Akbar is a leading Indian journalist and author. He has recently taken charge as Editorial Director of India Today, India's leading weekly English news magazine published by the Living Media group...
, a journalist, boycotted the BBC to speak about the November 2008 Mumbai attacks. Stephen Pound MP has supported these claims, referring to the BBC's reporting of the terror attacks as "the worst sort of mealy mouthed posturing. It is desperation to avoid causing offence which ultimately causes more offence to everyone."
Writing for The Hindu
The Hindu
The Hindu is an Indian English-language daily newspaper founded and continuously published in Chennai since 1878. According to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, it has a circulation of 1.46 million copies as of December 2009. The enterprise employed over 1,600 workers and gross income reached $40...
Business Line, Premen Addy criticised the BBC's reportage on South Asia as consistently anti-India and pro-Islamist, and that they underreport India's economic and social achievements, as well as political and diplomatic efforts, and disproportionately highlight and exaggerate problems in the country. In addition, Addy alludes to discrimination
Discrimination
Discrimination is the prejudicial treatment of an individual based on their membership in a certain group or category. It involves the actual behaviors towards groups such as excluding or restricting members of one group from opportunities that are available to another group. The term began to be...
against Indian anchors and reporters in favour of Pakistan
Pakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...
i and Bangladesh
Bangladesh
Bangladesh , officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh is a sovereign state located in South Asia. It is bordered by India on all sides except for a small border with Burma to the far southeast and by the Bay of Bengal to the south...
i ones who are hostile to India.
Writing for the Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Alasdair Pinkerton analysed the coverage of India by the BBC since India's independence from British rule in 1947 until 2008. Pinkerton observes a tumultuous history involving allegations of anti-India bias in the BBC's reportage, particularly 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...
, and concludes that the BBC's coverage of South Asian geopolitics and economics shows a pervasive and hostile anti-India bias due to the BBC's alleged imperialist and neo-colonialist
Neocolonialism
Neocolonialism is the practice of using capitalism, globalization, and cultural forces to control a country in lieu of direct military or political control...
stance.
Writing on western media bias
Media bias
Media bias refers to the bias of journalists and news producers within the mass media in the selection of events and stories that are reported and how they are covered. The term "media bias" implies a pervasive or widespread bias contravening the standards of journalism, rather than the...
regarding South Asia
South Asia
South Asia, also known as Southern Asia, is the southern region of the Asian continent, which comprises the sub-Himalayan countries and, for some authorities , also includes the adjoining countries to the west and the east...
in the journal of the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses
Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses
Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses , New Delhi is India's premier think tank for advanced research in international relations, especially strategic and security issues, and also trains civilian and military officers of the Government of India. Established in 1965, IDSA is funded by but...
, media analyst Ajai K. Rai strongly criticised the BBC for anti-India bias. He claims that there is a total lack of depth or fairness in the BBC's reportage on conflict zones in South Asia
South Asia
South Asia, also known as Southern Asia, is the southern region of the Asian continent, which comprises the sub-Himalayan countries and, for some authorities , also includes the adjoining countries to the west and the east...
, and that the BBC has, on one occasion, fabricated photographs while reporting on the Kashmir conflict
Kashmir conflict
The Kashmir conflict is a territorial dispute between India and Pakistan over the Kashmir region, the northwesternmost region of South Asia....
in order to make India look bad. He also writes that the BBC made false allegations that the Indian Army
Indian Army
The Indian Army is the land based branch and the largest component of the Indian Armed Forces. With about 1,100,000 soldiers in active service and about 1,150,000 reserve troops, the Indian Army is the world's largest standing volunteer army...
stormed a sacred Muslim
Muslim
A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...
shrine, the tomb of Hazrat Sheikh Noor-u-din Noorani in Charari Sharief
Charari Sharief
Charari Sharief is a town and a notified area committee in Badgam district in the state of Jammu & Kashmir, India.-Geography:...
, and only retracted the claim after strong criticism from the media in India for several weeks.
Hutton Inquiry
BBC News was at the centre of one the largest political controversies in recent years. Three BBC News reports (Andrew GilliganAndrew Gilligan
Andrew Paul Gilligan is a British journalist best known for a 2003 report on BBC Radio 4's The Today Programme in which he said a British government briefing paper on Iraq and weapons of mass destruction had been 'sexed up', a claim that ultimately led to a public inquiry that criticised Gilligan...
's on Today
Today programme
Today is BBC Radio 4's long-running early morning news and current affairs programme, now broadcast from 6.00 am to 9.00 am Monday to Friday, and 7.00 am to 9.00 am on Saturdays. It is also the most popular programme on Radio 4 and one of the BBC's most popular programmes across its radio networks...
, Gavin Hewitt's on The Ten O'Clock News and another on Newsnight
Newsnight
Newsnight is a BBC Television current affairs programme noted for its in-depth analysis and often robust cross-examination of senior politicians. Jeremy Paxman has been its main presenter for over two decades....
) quoted an anonymous source that stated the British government (particularly the Prime Minister's office) had embellished the September Dossier
September Dossier
Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction: The Assessment of the British Government, also known as the September Dossier, was a document published by the British government on 24 September 2002 on the same day of a recall of Parliament to discuss the contents of the document...
with misleading exaggerations of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction
Weapons of mass destruction
A weapon of mass destruction is a weapon that can kill and bring significant harm to a large number of humans and/or cause great damage to man-made structures , natural structures , or the biosphere in general...
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
Brian Hutton, Baron Hutton
James Brian Edward Hutton, Baron Hutton, PC, QC , is a former Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland and British Lord of Appeal in Ordinary.- Background :...
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
Richard Sambrook
Richard Sambrook is Global Vice Chairman and Chief Content Officer of the Edelman public relations agency. For 30 years, until February 2010, he was a BBC journalist and news executive, becoming successively Director of BBC Sport, BBC News and, latterly, Director of BBC World Service and Global...
, 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 the Chairman's, Gavyn Davies
Gavyn Davies
Gavyn Davies, OBE was the chairman of the BBC from 2001 until 2004, a former Goldman Sachs banker and a former economic advisor to the British Government...
, 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
Director-General of the BBC
The Director-General of the British Broadcasting Corporation is chief executive and editor-in-chief of the BBC.The position was formerly appointed by the Board of Governors of the BBC and is now appointed by the BBC Trust....
, Greg Dyke
Greg Dyke
Gregory "Greg" Dyke is a British media executive, journalist and broadcaster. Since the 1960s, Dyke has a long career in the UK in print and then broadcast journalism. He is credited with introducing 'tabloid' television to British broadcasting, and reviving the ratings of TV-am...
, the following day, and the resignation of Gilligan on 30 January. While undoubtedly 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-IsraelIsrael
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
biases.
Douglas Davis, the London correspondent of The Jerusalem Post
The Jerusalem Post
The Jerusalem Post is an Israeli daily English-language broadsheet newspaper, founded on December 1, 1932 by Gershon Agron as The Palestine Post. The daily readership numbers do not approach those of the major Hebrew newspapers....
, 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 delegitimising the Jewish state and pumping oxygen into a dark old European hatred that dared not speak its name for the past half-century.". However two large independent studies, one conducted by Loughborough University and the other by Glasgow University's Media Group concluded that Israeli perspectives are given greater coverage.
Critics of the BBC argue that the Balen Report proves systematic bias against Israel in headline news programming. Daily Mail
Daily Mail
The Daily Mail is a British daily middle-market tabloid newspaper owned by the Daily Mail and General Trust. First published in 1896 by Lord Northcliffe, it is the United Kingdom's second biggest-selling daily newspaper after The Sun. Its sister paper The Mail on Sunday was launched in 1982...
and The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. The newspaper was founded by Arthur B...
criticised the BBC for spending hundreds of thousands of British tax payers' pounds from preventing the report being released to the public.
Jeremy Bowen
Jeremy Bowen
Jeremy Francis John Bowen is a Welsh journalist and television presenter. He was the BBC's Middle East correspondent based in Jerusalem between 1995 and 2000, and has been its Middle East Editor since 2005.-Background:...
, the Middle East Editor for BBC world news, was singled out specifically for bias by the BBC Trust
BBC Trust
The BBC Trust is the governing body of the British Broadcasting Corporation. It is operationally independent of BBC management and external bodies, and aims to act in the best interests of licence fee payers....
which concluded that he violated "BBC guidelines on accuracy and impartiality."
Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and...
, and David Edwards of Medialens.org tend to criticise 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 appointed by the BBC Trust
BBC Trust
The BBC Trust is the governing body of the British Broadcasting Corporation. It is operationally independent of BBC management and external bodies, and aims to act in the best interests of licence fee payers....
was set up in 2006 to review the impartiality of the BBC's coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
Israeli-Palestinian conflict
The Israeli–Palestinian conflict is the ongoing conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. The conflict is wide-ranging, and the term is also used in reference to the earlier phases of the same conflict, between Jewish and Zionist yishuv and the Arab population living in Palestine under Ottoman or...
. 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." It notes that, "the failure to convey adequately the disparity in the Israeli and Palestinian experience, [reflects] the fact that one side is in control and the other lives under occupation".
Writing in the FT, Philip Stephens, one of the panellists, 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 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
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
, who picked out the apparent case of Fayad Abu Shamala, the BBC Arabic
BBC Arabic
BBC Arabic may refer to the Arabic-language radio station run by the BBC World Service, as well as the BBC’s Arabic-language satellite TV channel, and the website that serves as an Arabic language news portal and provides online access to both the TV and radio broadcasts.The radio service is...
Service correspondent, who told a Hamas
Hamas
Hamas is the Palestinian Sunni Islamic or Islamist political party that governs the Gaza Strip. Hamas also has a military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades...
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
Gaza
Gaza , also referred to as Gaza City, is a Palestinian city in the Gaza Strip, with a population of about 450,000, making it the largest city in the Palestinian territories.Inhabited since at least the 15th century BC,...
and Ariel Sharon
Ariel Sharon
Ariel Sharon is an Israeli statesman and retired general, who served as Israel’s 11th Prime Minister. He has been in a permanent vegetative state since suffering a stroke on 4 January 2006....
'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.
Tom Gross
Tom Gross
Tom Gross is a British-born journalist and international affairs commentator, specializing in the Middle East. He was formerly Jerusalem correspondent for the London Sunday Telegraph and for the New York Daily News...
accused the BBC of glorifying Hamas suicide bombers, and condemned its policy of inviting guests such as Jenny Tonge
Jenny Tonge
Jennifer Louise Tonge, Baroness Tonge is a politician in the United Kingdom. She was Liberal Democrat Member of Parliament for Richmond Park in London from 1997 to 2005.-Early life:...
and Tom Paulin
Tom Paulin
Thomas Neilson Paulin is a Northern Irish poet and critic of film, music and literature. He lives in England, where he is the GM Young Lecturer in English Literature at Hertford College, Oxford.- Life and work :...
who have compared Israeli soldiers to Nazis. Writing for the BBC, Paulin said Israeli soldiers
Israel Defense Forces
The Israel Defense Forces , commonly known in Israel by the Hebrew acronym Tzahal , are the military forces of the State of Israel. They consist of the ground forces, air force and navy. It is the sole military wing of the Israeli security forces, and has no civilian jurisdiction within Israel...
should be "shot dead" like Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
's S.S, and said he could "understand how suicide bombers feel." According to Gross, Paulin and Tonge continue to be invited as regular guests, and they are among the most frequent contributors to their most widely-screened arts program.
The BBC also faced criticism for not airing a Disasters Emergency Committee
Disasters Emergency Committee
The Disasters Emergency Committee is an umbrella group comprising fourteen UK charities. These charities are all associated with disaster related issues such as providing clean water, humanitarian aid and medical care....
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.
British lawyer and journalist Julie Burchill
Julie Burchill
Julie Burchill is an English writer and journalist. Beginning as a writer for the New Musical Express at the age of 17, she has written for newspapers such as The Sunday Times and The Guardian. She is a self-declared "militant feminist". She has several times been involved in legal action...
has accused BBC of creating a "climate of fear" for British Jews
British Jews
British Jews are Jews who live in, or are citizens of, the United Kingdom. In the 2001 Census, 266,740 people listed their religion as Jewish. The UK is home to the second largest Jewish population in Europe, and has the fifth largest Jewish community worldwide...
over its "excessive coverage" of Israel compared to other nations.
In a sixty-eight page study published by BBC watch examining BBC's coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict between January–June 2005, it concluded that "journalists have a predilection to denigrate Israel and to evoke sympathy for Palestinians." The researchers claimed that BBC is "fascinated with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict" based on a pictorial analysis: 15.80% of all pictures published on BBC world news are on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, compared to 0.51% for the Darfur conflict
War in Darfur
The Darfur Conflict was a guerrilla conflict or civil war centered on the Darfur region of Sudan. It began in February 2003 when the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army and Justice and Equality Movement groups in Darfur took up arms, accusing the Sudanese government of oppressing non-Arab Sudanese in...
.
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 for eight years as a terrorist organisation until being allowed to operate again over a year after the 2008 electionsZimbabwean presidential election, 2008
The Republic of Zimbabwe held a presidential election along with a parliamentary election on 29 March 2008. The three major candidates were incumbent President Robert Mugabe of the Zimbabwe African National Union - Patriotic Front , Morgan Tsvangirai of the Movement for Democratic Change , and...
. The BBC was banned in Burma (officially Myanmar) after BBC's coverage and commentary on anti-government protests there in September 2007. The ban was lifted 4 years later on September 2011. Other cases have included Uzbekistan
Uzbekistan
Uzbekistan , officially the Republic of Uzbekistan is a doubly landlocked country in Central Asia and one of the six independent Turkic states. It shares borders with Kazakhstan to the west and to the north, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to the east, and Afghanistan and Turkmenistan to the south....
,
China, and Pakistan
Pakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...
. The BBC online news site's Persian
Persian language
Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...
version was recently blocked from the Iranian internet. The BBC News website was made available in China again in March 2008.
See also
- BBC News SpecialBBC News SpecialBBC News Special is the title given by BBC News to a news programme covering one specific and important event, often unscheduled. It is usually used to refer to situations where the programme being broadcast on the BBC News channel is also broadcast on either BBC One, BBC Two or BBC World News...
- BBC newsreaders and journalists
- BBC television news programmes
- List of BBC television newsreaders
- List of former BBC newsreaders and journalists
- Toddlers' TruceToddlers' TruceThe Toddlers' Truce was a piece of early British television scheduling policy that required transmissions to terminate for an hour each weekday between 6pm and 7pm. This was from the end of Children's TV to the start of the evening schedule, so that young children could be put to bed.-Background:It...
External links
- BBC Newswatch – The history of BBC News at BBC Online
- BBC News – Fifty years of TV news at BBC Online
- BBC News Styleguide
- BBC News in focus: Photos from the past six decades The GuardianThe GuardianThe Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...