Sigalon's BBC Soup

Today is World Press Freedom Day and during recent days we have learnt that BBC World News, our 24/7 international news channel, has been jammed by Chinese authorities during stories they regard as sensitive.

This included Damian Grammaticas' report yesterday on Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng leaving the US embassy.

This deliberate electronic interference of the channel's distribution signal is just the latest in a long line of examples to block our impartial news and prevent it reaching audiences.

The BBC's Chinese language website has been consistently blocked in China, apart from a brief respite during the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and our radio broadcasts in Mandarin were historically subject to persistent frequency interference for decades.
And these issues are certainly not just restricted to China.

In November, BBC World News was taken off-air in Pakistan by cable operators for broadcasting a documentary entitled Secret Pakistan.

BBC Persian TV has suffered deliberate interference to its broadcasting signals intermittently since its launch and the online service has consistently been blocked.

Other international broadcasters including Deutsche Welle and Voice of America have also been subject to deliberate electronic interference by the Iranian authorities.

In addition, in recent months, new tactics have been introduced which should be of deep concern to all those who believe in a free and independent international media.

This includes the intimidation of the families and acquaintances in Iran of BBC Persian's London-based staff. All journalists should be allowed to operate freely and any attempt to intimidate those known to them, is very concerning.

We strongly condemn these acts of censorship and harassment. The BBC has a long history of standing up to these attempts to prevent access to free media. This includes working closely with other international broadcasters to highlight these issues and encourage concerted international action.

We would again urge the countries where jamming, censorship and harassment emanates from, to stop these restrictive practices.

It is also imperative that the global community is doing all they can to counter attempts to block authoritative news.

The challenges that our international journalists face have never been so many and varied.

The BBC will continue to represent the voice of free media where there is no other access to fair and authoritative news - be it because of suppression and persecution of journalists, a growth in state sponsored media or attempts to jam or censor our news.

Today, on World Press Freedom Day, we repeat the call on international governments and the relevant regulatory bodies to put maximum pressure on those who seek to block access to trusted and independent news.

Peter Horrocks is director, BBC Global News

Earlier this month, my colleagues Paul Wood, Fred Scott and Kevin Sweeney were smuggled into Syria.

The BBC's Abdullah Ghorab was attacked in Yemen

Their reports made headlines around the world - they were the only international news team in Homs as President Assad's forces began bombarding the city.

Last week, a remarkable documentary on the World Service captured the courage and commitment needed to bring such stories to international attention. But too many in our profession pay a heavy price.

During 2011, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) says 46 journalists lost their lives, covering conflicts from Pakistan to Somalia, Mexico to Libya.

Tragically, 2012 is already on course to outstrip that grim toll: a further six journalists have been killed in the first six weeks of this year.

We can never eliminate the risk of operating in places like Libya or Syria - only try to manage it to an acceptable level.

But in their annual report published today, the CPJ warns of a new risk - one that is more difficult to manage. It suggests regimes are finding new ways to censor the media and silence dissent.

During the uprisings across the Arab World, the internet has been a vital newsgathering tool.

Twitter and Facebook have been a source of information and video in places like Bahrain and Yemen, as well as Libya and Syria where the authorities have refused to allow access to the international media. But censorship is still alive and well.

In Homs, it became clear that the Syrian military were trying to jam our satellite equipment to prevent us reporting from the besieged city.

Earlier this month, we revealed how the Iranian government was trying to intimidate colleagues working for the BBC's Persian Service outside Iran by targeting family members who still live inside the country.

Passports of family members have been confiscated, preventing them from leaving Iran. Some of my colleagues have had their Facebook and email accounts hacked.

Ten days ago BBC Arabic reporter Abdullah Ghorab was attacked in Yemen, by a gang thought to be supporters of the outgoing president Ali Abdullah Saleh. His two brothers, who were with him, were badly beaten.

It was the third time Ghorab had been assaulted in Yemen, and he's also been verbally attacked by the country's deputy information minister.

Today, the CPJ warns that regimes may try to crack down further, precisely because they fear their ability to control the flow of information is weakening.

A year ago in Libya - two days after the start of the uprising that would bring down Colonel Gaddafi - an internet TV station started webcasting from Benghazi.

Long before international reporters made it to Libya, Alhurra TV (Free TV) was streaming footage online, allowing the world to see what was going on inside the country.

The authorities tried to shut down the internet to silence the station but, thanks to the ingenuity of its founder Mo Nabbous and his colleagues, government blocks were bypassed and the webcast was able to continue.

A month later, Nabbous was dead - killed by pro-Gaddafi troops in the battle for Benghazi.

A year on, those in Syria are following in Nabbous's footsteps. In Homs, activists have been using the Swedish website Bambuser to live stream pictures from inside the besieged city.

On Friday, the company said the Syrian government had blocked the site, a day after it broadcast images of an oil pipeline that campaigners claimed had been bombed by the Syrian military.

The CPJ is calling for the creation of a worldwide coalition against censorship made up of pressure groups, governments and businesses.

It's not just the BBC that faces difficulties - and not just Syria and Iran where we have problems. The internet has enabled millions to communicate more openly.

But that new-found freedom cannot be taken for granted.

Jon Williams is the BBC World News editor.

Today the BBC Trust publishes its findings into an investigation of the funding arrangements for certain programmes broadcast on our international commercial television news channel, BBC World News.

The Trust has concluded that 15 programmes broadcast in our weekend schedule breached the BBC's editorial or sponsorship guidelines.

The programmes concerned were acquired by the channel at low or nominal cost, and around half of them were funded or partly funded by charities, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) or other similar groups.

The Trust found breaches of guidelines in seven programmes relating to conflict of interest; the promotion of a sponsor's activities; the prohibition of sponsorship for current affairs programming; and the way in which funding was credited to ensure transparency for viewers.

The remaining breaches concerned programmes made for the BBC by an independent production company, which failed to disclose to us that it had a financial relationship with the Malaysian government, while producing programmes with a "heavy focus" on Malaysia.

The Trust classifies this as "serious breaches" of its guidelines, and BBC World News fully accepts their findings. We share the Trust's view that the integrity and independence of the BBC's editorial decisions is of paramount importance. We welcome their conclusion that none of the programmes breached requirements for impartiality. But nevertheless, we are determined to learn the lessons from what has gone wrong.

So how did it happen? There is no single, or simple answer. The cases involving Malaysia were serious because we transmitted programmes without being made aware of a conflict of interest by the supplying production company. Eight programmes were broadcast between 2009 and July 2011, with references to Malaysia. Following reports in the Independent newspaper, the production company admitted to the BBC that it represented the Malaysian government through another division of its activities. We didn't know this at the time, and we have now terminated our relationship with this company.

A second conflict of interest arose in another programme about carbon trading, where an association was found between an organisation featured in the programme, and a company which funded the programme production. This conflict was not declared to us at the time of transmission - had we known, we would not have broadcast it.

In the remaining cases examined by the Trust, the issues were primarily related to how we interpreted editorial or sponsorship guidelines. This, again, is something we take very seriously, and today we are announcing new procedures which take full account of the findings.

The Trust did say that no BBC staff had intended to breach guidelines, but there seemed to be a lack of knowledge or genuine confusion about the relevant guidance. Clearly we need to tighten our procedures so that it doesn't happen again.

As a result, we are taking steps to tighten our list of supplying production companies, and to put in place a more rigorous process to approve programme commissions - including further checks on any potential conflicts of interest. We have also undertaken no longer to commission or acquire programmes sponsored by non-commercial organisations, and have stopped taking programmes at low nominal cost. We have re-affirmed that sponsored programming will only be allowed in non-news and current affairs genres, and we will act on the Trust's guidance to take a "strictly prudential view" of what amounts to sponsorship.

These are complex cases, but the principles underlying them are simple. We must not damage the audience's trust in what we broadcast. We know we have some hard work to do to make up for this, but we are determined to do so.

Richard Porter is controller of English at BBC Global News.

At the Imperial War Museum's northern outpost in Salford, a special exhibition celebrates the ranks of Britain's war correspondents - among them Winston Churchill. Before becoming a celebrated war leader, he found fame as a war reporter for the Morning Post during the Boer War. More than a century on, those same skills of courage and drive displayed on the battlefields of South Africa have been seen in Libya.

It takes real bravery to head towards the sound of gunfire and explosions when any right thinking person is running away - a courage shared not just by the correspondents but the often, unsung heroes, the producers, crews and engineers who get them on the air.

For much of the past week, the BBC has been the only UK broadcaster reporting from Tripoli - a five-strong team led by correspondent Matthew Price has holed up in the capital's Rixos Hotel, unable to go out unless "escorted" by Gaddafi government minders.

As parts of Tripoli fell, Matthew described his routine in a piece for the BBC News website - dinner in body armour and helmets, fear stalking the corridors as government officials abandoned the international media to their fate.

When Nato bombs started raining down on Libya, our Tripoli Correspondent Rana Jawad went into hiding. Being the BBC's correspondent in Gaddafi country was never easy at the best of times. But Rana refused the chance to leave: her life and her family was in Tripoli - and for five months, she filed a series of reports, billed only as a Tripoli Witness describing life in the capital.

At the BBC, everyone who works in a war zone is a volunteer. Like Rana, they make the decision to stay or go. Last night in a highly volatile situation, the BBC team in Zawiya, along with other major broadcasters judged it was not safe to continue with the rebels on the road into Tripoli.

Alex Crawford of Sky News took a different view and has rightly been praised for some compelling coverage. I congratulate her on her tenacity - it made for extraordinary television. But to illustrate the dangers facing those in Libya, this morning that same BBC team, led by Rupert Wingfield-Hayes came under fire as they entered Tripoli. The team is safe - but the footage which you can see here is terrifying.

Against this background we have succeeded in delivering comprehensive coverage of events in Libya since the uprising started in February. We have reported from Benghazi, Misrata and the advancing front line. Dozens of colleagues from many news organisations have risked their lives over the past five months to tell a hugely important story.

As I write, the fight for Tripoli is not over yet and some are still risking everything to ensure we can give our audiences - including those in Libya - first hand, "eyewitness" reporting. I could not be more proud of them.

Jon Williams is the BBC World News editor.

You've got to hand it to the Tajiks - they certainly aren't worried about "nanny state" criticism:

"People were getting into debt to afford weddings, now the new law allows only 150 guests to be fed at wedding parties. The celebration cannot last for more than three hours and only one dish is allowed to be served."

That's what Tajik wedding inspector Mahmadrasul told the BBC's Rayhan Demytrie when she travelled to the village of Davlat-Abad, to film a wedding for the BBC's Extreme Weddings day.

And he should know - he stays at the ceremony to make sure there are no transgressions.

There couldn't be a greater contrast with the wedding of Nadini, a well-known singer, and Madura, her businessman sweetheart, attended by the BBC's Charles Haviland in Sri Lanka last weekend. There, hundreds of guests celebrated in a ceremony that cost tens of thousands of dollars.

You can see reports from both these weddings 14 and 15 April, as part of our Extreme World series, where BBC correspondents around the world compare the extremes of any given topic. We've covered hot and cold climates, the rights of women and the best and worst places to die.

Extreme weddings: Your pictures

And with Britain's royal wedding on the horizon, we wanted to engage our audiences worldwide in a debate about what weddings and the marriage ceremony itself mean to them. So we'll be bringing Rayhan and Charles together to report live on what they've seen.

Although there are great contrasts in the way people celebrate their weddings around the world - whether modest or lavish - we noticed that everywhere you go, people are investing as much as they can possibly afford, and then some more, in their marriage celebration.

It all ties in with the domestic debate in the UK about the scale of the royal wedding - how do the Royal Family negotiate the tricky problem of organising a wedding fit for a prince, in increasingly austere times?

We hope our audiences around the world have some suggestions. And we're asking them and you to contribute pictures and descriptions of the most extraordinary wedding you've ever attended, which we'll be showing on the BBC's royal wedding site.

Just make sure no-one shows Tajikistan's wedding enforcement team - they might not be happy.

Extreme Weddings is on throughout 14 and 15 April on the World Service, BBC World News and the BBC News website.

Jamie Angus is acting head of news, BBC World News.

Reporting from Libya is tricky at the best of times - clearly, the situation there right now is anything but.

For 41 years, Muammar Gaddafi - the self-proclaimed "Brotherly Leader and Guide of the Revolution" - has made life difficult for the Western media. While British nationals can enter many of the world's 192 countries without visas, or collect them on arrival, Libya is one of the exceptions. There, the door is firmly shut to international journalists, local reporters face intimidation and the threat of worse. It explains why, in contrast to recent events in Tunisia, Egypt and Bahrain, we're unable to report from inside Libya on the protests taking place there, and the authorities violent response.

And that's an uncomfortable place for us to be.

In recent years, from Burma, to Afghanistan and Zimbabwe - even in Iran and North Korea - my colleagues have been on the frontline, eyewitness to events making headlines around the globe. In Libya this weekend, we've been forced to rely on others' eyewitness accounts. The geography of the country - much of it is barren desert - means it's simply not practical for us to enter Libya "under-cover". Add to that, the ruthlessness of the Libyan authorities, and the scale of violence, and you'll understand why - just a week after covering Egypt's own convulsions - Jon Leyne is reporting developments from Cairo.

When violence was last visited on Tripoli and Benghazi, the BBC was there to witness events. Famously, Norman Tebbit condemned Kate Adie's reporting of the US airstrikes on Libya on April 1986. Twenty five years later, the protests - and the authorities' response - are taking place with no international reporters present.

The BBC and other news organisations are relying on those on the ground to tell us what's happening. Their phone accounts - often accompanied by the sound or gunfire and mortars - are vivid. However, inevitably, it means we cannot independently verify the accounts coming out of Libya. That's why we don't present such accounts as "fact" - they are "claims" or "allegations".

Similarly, the flow of video - the so-called "user-generated-content" - has dwindled to a trickle as the authorities have periodically turned off the Internet. That means we have an additional responsibility - to be clear with our audiences not just what little we do know, but perhaps more significantly, what we don't.

Critics of the BBC's coverage of Libya 25 years ago accused our reporting from Tripoli and Benghazi of being "riddled with inaccuracy, innuendo & imbalance". I suspect Colonel Gaddafi's supporters will make the same allegations about the international coverage of events in Libya this weekend. It wasn't true then, it isn't true now. But when we're not on the ground, we have to work twice as hard to make sure that we're telling all sides of the story.

Jon Williams is the BBC World News editor.

Brian Hanrahan's career was made by one, short, well-turned phrase - but there was so much more to the man who, for three decades, roamed the world reporting on the biggest stories of the day.

 

In 1982, as the Royal Navy Task Force sailed in the south Atlantic, Brian was stationed aboard HMS Hermes, the aircraft carrier that served as the flagship of the fleet. Then - as today - reporters covering wars are not allowed to disclose "operational details".

So the phrase for which he will always be remembered was a clever ruse to get round reporting restrictions so he could say all the British Harrier jets had returned safely. It was a classroom lesson in good reporting under pressure - and won him new-found fame.

In the early 1990s, the satirist Chris Morris wrote a spoof TV news show, first for Radio 4 as On The Hour, and then for BBC2 as The Day Today. It was most famous for its sports reporter, Steve Coogan's Alan Partridge. But the name of the economics correspondent, Peter O'Hanraha-Hanrahan was clearly an "homage" to Brian. What greater accolade could any journalist wish for?

The steady nerve Brian showed in the Falkands served him well in the intervening 28 years - he saw more than his share of history unfold. Covering Asia from Hong Kong in the 1980s, he reported on the reforms of Deng Xiaoping in China, and the assassination of Indira Gandhi in India. He moved to Moscow when Mikhail Gorbachev became the Soviet leader, returning to Russia last year to interview Gorbachev. In 1989 he was in Beijing when the tanks rolled in to Tiananmen Square, famously reporting on the fall of the Wall as Berlin was reunited. Earlier this year he returned to Poland - where he'd reported on the rise of Solidarity - to cover the plane crash that killed President Lech Kaczynski.

In recent years, Brian had travelled to many countries, and covered ceremonial and state events such as the anniversaries of D-Day and the funerals of Princess Diana, the Queen Mother and the Pope. He was a regular voice on Radio 4 as presenter of both The World at One and The World This Weekend.

Brian fell ill the week before the election, and on polling day I went to visit him in hospital in north London. He was preparing for a long night and was frustrated that he wouldn't be at an election count, as he had been for the previous seven. Instead, he had persuaded the nursing staff to allow him to have a radio and an earpiece, and was making a date with Radio 4.

He returned to work while undergoing treatment - while tired, he was determined to do the job he loved. Last week, he'd planned to report from RAF Cottesmore as the Harriers he'd counted out in the Falklands were counted back for the final time before being withdrawn from service. Instead, he found himself back in hospital. As Harriers landed for the final time, the crews of RAF Cottesmore recorded a get-well message to Brian.

Brian had a special relationship with the audience - he broke through in a way few others do. They had come to trust him as a voice of calm - whether reporting on momentous events of history, or the grand state events. For more than 30 years, it was that quality above all others that distinguished Brian as one of the BBC's brightest and best. We mourn his loss.

Jon Williams is the BBC World News editor.

This weekend a new film is released around the UK. In truth, it's unlikely to trouble the big Hollywood blockbusters - but it's creating waves nevertheless.

John Pilger made his name in South East Asia covering the wars in Vietnam and Cambodia in the 70s. His is a particular type of journalism. He doesn't pretend to be impartial - he's a campaigner. In The Wars You Don't See he takes aim at the mainstream media - including the BBC. The charge is that in Iraq and Afghanistan - then and now - we beat the drums of war.

There's a lot of ancient history in the film: was the media too unquestioning of the White House and Downing Street; were we willing participants in a rush to judgement about Saddam's supposed "weapons of mass destruction". The arguments have been rehearsed many times - and are valid areas for debate.

But Pilger makes a more serious charge: that too often, the BBC and others only report conflict from the perspective of those who wage war, and not those who are, so often, the victims - the civilians. He claims that "embedding" reporters alongside the Armed Forces at best, distorts the story and worse, makes the media a mouthpiece for the military.

He's right to identify the danger - "embedding" only ever provides one piece of the jigsaw. That's why, in Baghdad and Kabul, the BBC - at some cost and risk - has bureaux that report the other bits of the story. In Iraq, Gabriel Gatehouse and Jim Muir have covered the threats to Baghdad's Christians, while in Kabul, our opinion poll this week focused on the attitudes of the people of Afghanistan - not the military.

But "embedding" does have real value. There are 9,500 British troops in Afghanistan - and more than 100,000 US service personnel. Theirs is an important perspective, and their operations an important part of the story. The security situation means, sometimes, it is only possible to travel to certain parts of the country as part of a military "embed".

Pilger's case is that the media has to toe the establishment line otherwise they don't get access. Tell that to John Simpson or to our Kabul correspondent, Paul Wood - neither of them shrinking violets. Relationships are more sophisticated than John Pilger would have us believe. UK embeds are covered by a set of agreements between the media and the Ministry of Defence: the so-called Green Book [169KB PDF] is available online for anybody to read.

A public protocol is a strange conspiracy.

Jon Williams is the BBC World News editor.

Today the distinguished Reuters Institute at Oxford University publishes a provocative paper, Are Foreign Correspondents Redundant? [1,013KB PDF]

John Simpson interviewing Aung San Suu Kyi

I should declare an interest: its author used to be my boss - twice! Richard Sambrook was director of News and most recently director of Global News; as the BBC's head of newsgathering, he helped build the network of overseas bureaux and foreign correspondents it is my privilege to lead.

He suggests that economic pressures and digital technology are undermining the role of the foreign correspondent - although his argument is more nuanced than the paper's title suggests. The paper should probably be called Is The Traditional White Male Ex-pat Correspondent Working From An Office With A Satellite Link To London At Risk? In that case, the answer would unquestionably be "yes" - but the title exaggerates to makes its point.

I can tweet as well as the next man (@WilliamsJon is my personal account, since you ask). But the idea that Twitter or other social media can replace rather than complement traditional, mainstream reporting is fanciful. Actually, I'd go further and suggest it's an opportunity rather than a threat.

In a world of more "noise" from the blogs and social networks, there's a craving from the mainstream audience for a "trusted guide" to make sense of it all - they want someone to help explain what matters and what doesn't. That's why even among the "networked" followers of Twitter, hundreds of thousands of people subscribe to the BBC's breaking news feed (@BBCBreaking) and thousands more follow the likes of Robert Peston, Rory Cellan-Jones and Laura Kuenssberg.

And just because someone random says - or tweets - something, it doesn't mean it's true. Three weeks ago, the blogosphere and the rest of the net were awash with rumours that Aung San Suu Kyi had been released hours before she was set free. Ironically, it was perhaps the most "traditional" foreign correspondent, John Simpson, who was there to tell the world of her actual release - in the same way as he has been doing for more than 40 years.

Richard is right to suggest that the "traditional" model is changing. I'm proud we have a more diverse reporting team than ever - though we also have more to do. The latest generation of foreign correspondents is as happy behind the camera as in front of it, filming as well as reporting. And broadband access means the spare bedroom can become a TV studio when the big story breaks.

But these aren't threats to the foreign correspondent; they're a chance to renew the relationship between the eye-witness reporter and the audience. The paper concludes:

"[T]he independent witnessing of events has been the core purpose of foreign reporting from its earliest days and will remain so for the future."

Phew! The foreign correspondent may no longer be the only voice in a "networked world", but he or she can be the most trusted voice. In an ever more complex world, they are far from being redundant.

Jon Williams is the BBC World News editor.

On Thursday, the BBC and the other UK media will broadcast an appeal by the UK Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC).

The DEC is an umbrella organisation of the 13 main UK-based charities - and at times of overseas emergencies, it swings into action.

Earlier this year, following the earthquake in Haiti, the BBC broadcast an appeal by DEC which raised more than £100m - second only to the Asian tsunami in terms of the amount of money raised.

We will broadcast another appeal on Thursday - this time for those affected by the floods in Pakistan.

The BBC is not part of DEC but has an understanding, that at times of international crisis, it will broadcast an emergency appeal provided three main tests are met:

• The disaster must be of such scale and urgency that it requires swift international humanitarian assistance
• The DEC agencies must be in a position to provide effective and swift assistance, at such scale, to justify a national appeal
• There must be reasonable grounds for concluding that a public appeal would be successful

The BBC believes that in the case of the Pakistan floods, the threshold has been met. And while the appeal is quite separate from the on-going editorial coverage of the disaster, clearly, the response is - in part - shaped by what our teams have been reporting on radio, TV and online.

Two years ago, we ran a series of promos on air, celebrating the BBC's global presence around the world.

That value has been demonstrated in recent days. The BBC is the only UK broadcaster to be based in Islamabad - a year ago, we doubled the size of the team in Pakistan, to enable us to focus on the deteriorating security situation there and in Afghanistan.

It's part of the tragedy of this story, that many of the places now so badly affected by the flood waters, are the same as those visited by Orla Guerin, Aleem Maqbool and their colleagues from the BBC Urdu Service in recent months, as they have been reporting Pakistan's insurgency.

But it's also meant that while our colleagues from the other news organisations have been scrambling to report the summer's big story, the BBC has had a head start.

Through the BBC Asian Network, we're also able to reflect and report the response among those in the UK with ties to Pakistan.

Estimates suggest around a million people in the UK can trace their heritage to Pakistan - around 1.5% of the UK population, making it the second largest Pakistani population in the World - the same reason that Pakistani President, Asif Ali Zardari, has chosen Birmingham as the place to launch the political career of his son, Bilawal, this weekend.

It's from Birmingham that the charity, Islamic Relief, is co-ordinating its appeal for Pakistan, as well as being part of the Disasters Emergency Committee.

DFID - the Department for International Development - has already pledged £10m to the relief effort. DEC and other international charities hope to raise much more in the coming days and weeks.

When others go home, the BBC team in Pakistan will remain on the ground, reporting on the relief operation, and following how the money raised is being spent.

It's a vital part of ensuring accountability - part of the BBC's core public service, and why those of you in the UK pay the licence fee.

Jon Williams is the BBC World News editor.