Talking points

Late but interesting; some quotes from current parliamentary inquiries into the future of the BBC World Service. 

First, from Jamie Angus, former Senior News Controller, Global News and World Service, in front of the Foreign Affairs Committee. 

"If I am completely honest, I think the BBC board is pulled in so many different directions that it does not have the headspace to really scrutinise and think about the strategic future of the World Service in the way that it might and arguably should." 

"In North America, if you make additional investments in editorial posts, in principle you can make enough commercial money back to fund those posts and produce a profit. That is why there is this very welcome investment into additional digital reporting roles in particular in North America—to build out a subscription product that people in the wealthiest news market on the planet will pay for. The unintended consequences are that if that happens alongside a drawing down and a reduction in editorial posts in places like east and west Africa, India and other parts of Asia, you end up with an unbalanced daily report.

"You do see this sometimes when you look at the BBC news website or use the BBC news app, which I do pretty heavily: you see a lot of commercially funded North America content. It is good quality and I have no complaints about it, but if you have a series of film reviews and in-depth digital reporting of North American politics, it is either squeezing other content out from the editorial front page or the content just is not there, because the BBC has closed editorial roles in China, for example. You end up with a skewed perception of what is happening in the world, and the international news website front page in the app is an incredibly important snapshot picture of what the BBC thinks is important on any given day."

Fiona Crack, Controller Content Language Services, at the Culture Committee, on the closure of Arabic Radio

"If you think about the timing of it, we were making those choices because of the financial situation. We were not able to foresee what happened in October in Gaza and in Israel. Looking back on that, would we have made those choices about Arabic radio? Potentially not. It is difficult to say but it does not feel like a good decision, but one that had to be held because of the funding. "