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The World Service faces a choice between decline and growth, the BBC’s Future of News report says. Photograph: Handout/Getty Images
The World Service faces a choice between decline and growth, the BBC’s Future of News report says. Photograph: Handout/Getty Images

World Service cuts will reduce UK's global 'soft power', BBC report warns

This article is more than 9 years old

Corporation’s Future of News report warns of ‘dangerous and disparate’ threat to independent and reliable world news from well-funded Chinese and Russian state broadcasters

The BBC has warned the government that its global news presence will end up marginalised by overseas rivals such as Russia Today and al-Jazeera unless multimillion-pound cuts are reversed.

In a stark warning over the future of its global news arm, the BBC said it faced “a choice between decline and growth” in the face of threats to foreign coverage that were “disparate and dangerous”.

The global news division includes the BBC World Service, which has suffered big cuts in recent years.

At the same time, the BBC’s Future of News report published on Wednesday, said the corporation should look to expand its local news coverage in the UK to fill the “democratic deficit” left by the closure of local newspapers across the country.

The proposal is likely to be controversial after home secretary Theresa May blamed the BBC for the woes of the regional press.

The report said the World Service was under increasing pressure from big state-sponsored rivals, such as al-Jazeera and Russia Today, both of which now have UK operations, and China Central Television, as well as digital platforms such as Facebook, Google and Twitter.

“The World Service faces a choice between decline and growth,” it said. “If the UK wants the BBC to remain valued and respected, an ambassador of Britain’s values and an agent of soft power in the world, then the BBC is going to have to commit to growing the World Service and the government will have to recognise this.

“The need for the BBC World Service to provide independent, reliable information to people who sorely need it is growing. The threats to foreign coverage are becoming more disparate and dangerous.

“Britain has a unique asset in the World Service – the BBC needs to decide whether there should be a strategy for growth or managed marginalisation.”

Bush House in London
Past glories: the BBC World Service’s former headquarters, Bush House in London. Photograph: Martin Argles/Guardian

The report’s conclusions will be seen as a shot across the bow of the government ahead of charter renewal negotiations, due to begin in earnest after the general election in May.

The World Service has suffered swingeing cuts and unprecedented job losses as a result of cuts to government funding.

Last year the BBC took responsibility for paying for the World Service out of the licence fee and boosted its income by controversially becoming the first licence fee-funded operation to take advertising and sponsorship.

Its role in the “soft power” battle and global information war has come under increasing pressure.

“China, Russia and Qatar are investing in their international channels in ways that we cannot match, but none has our values and our ability to investigate any story no matter how difficult,” said the report.

Highlighting Russia and Turkey, it said “in many parts of the world, there is not more free expression but less”.

John Whittingdale, chair of the Commons culture, media and sport select committee, said last month it was “frightening” how the World Service was being “outgunned massively by the Russians and the Chinese”.

The global threat was accompanied by a warning about the future of local news coverage in the UK.

John Whittingdale MP. Photograph: Graeme Robertson

It said the problems facing local newspapers, which has seen the closure of more than 100 titles and the loss of thousands of jobs since the downturn in 2008, were “not of the BBC’s making nor will they be alleviated by the BBC standing aside”.

“If the UK is to function as a devolved democracy it needs stronger local news, regional news and news services for the nations,” said the report.

“Devolution and the decline of the regional press are creating a real need for local news coverage: the BBC is going to have to do more to provide local news that properly serves all parts of the UK.”

It said the BBC had been “as guilty as others of cutting the budget of its local services”.

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The report warned that fewer young people were watching TV news in the UK and the “disruption that has taken such a toll on newspapers over the past 10 years will … come to TV news over the coming decade”.

Despite that, it said that even in a digital era in which the TV aerial would go “the way of the typewriter”, traditional TV news bulletins and current affairs would remain important and popular and should be the bedrock of what the BBC was about.

It said in the digital information age, “even though people say it’s easier to get the news, they feel increasingly unsure of that facts … they feel disinformed, partially informed, ill-informed”.

The first part of a two-part report into the future of BBC News, it concluded that the digital era would “force the BBC to rethink its allocation of resources” but said “the risks here are enormous”.

“The internet alone will not fulfil the democratic mission of journalism, it will not keep everyone informed,” it added.

“If the BBC moves too slowly, it will become irrelevant to the audiences of the future; if it moves too fast, it will lose its audiences before we even get to the future”.

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