Close Menu
Market Data Newsletter
Wednesday, September 30
Global Free Speech

BBC World Service, Aldwych. Photo by: Newscast Online/Alamy Could there be a more urgent need for an independent source of news and information with international reach and a historic track record of support for political dissidents and exiles from authoritarian regimes? If the BBC World Service didn’t exist, this would be a very good time to invent it. So it is excellent news that Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper has announced an increase in funding of £33m over the next three years. The settlement was said to be a priority for outgoing Director-General, Tim Davie, but MPs and campaign groups had warned of uncertainty as the deadline of the end of the financial year approached. At the end of February, Index coordinated a letter from nine free expression and journalism organisations calling on Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper to make the funding available and ensure a sustainable funding model for the future. Now the BBC is calling on the government to take back full responsibility for funding the service, as it did until 2014. The news of the funding settlement comes less than two months after the BBC announced the launch of an emergency radio programme for Iran in response to the internet blackout. In a move reminiscent of the work of Radio Free Europe and the World Service during the Cold War, BBC News Persian has been made available on mediumwave and shortwave to provide a half-hour programme broadcast every evening to Iran. Funding for the programme had been found from existing sources. But when Fiona Crack, Interim Global Director of BBC News announced the launch of the service in January, before the start of the current conflict, she made it clear that the cash could only be guaranteed until the end of March. In making the announcement, the foreign secretary paid tribute to the work of the World Service in Iran: “In a world of rising disinformation, the BBC World Service provides hundreds of millions with journalism they can trust and rely on. We are seeing in real time how the BBC Persian service is playing a crucial role in ensuring impartial, accurate news is reaching the Iranian people.” The BBC has developed a strong recent tradition of emergency radio news services launched in response to conflicts and disasters. In February, the BBC launched a news service for Ukraine following the Russian invasion. Emergency radio broadcasts were setup for Gaza and Sudan in 2023 and in Syria after the fall of Assad. In In April 2025, a BBC News Burmese satellite channel provided news in the aftermath of Myanmar earthquake. A report from the Public Accounts Committee warned of the wider consequences of cuts to the World Service. Speaking earlier this month. Conservative chair of the PAC, Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown said: ” It risks opening the door to propaganda from hostile states filling the void it leaves behind. At a time of heightened geopolitical tensions, the UK cannot afford to lose such a crucial soft power instrument.” Those who have worked at the World Service understand the importance of this element of the BBC’s output and the unique culture it engenders. Writing in The Times this week, columnist Libby Purves remembered her time as a young producer at the World Service HQ at Bush House in the 1970s. She told the story of taking an Angolan friend to lunch who explained how much the World Service had meant during her country’s civil war, “but when I pointed out one of its newsreaders eating lasagne at the next table she dared not be introduced lest emotion overwhelm her”. I had a similar experience with a Ghanian friend in the early 90s, who insisted on having our photo taken together outside Bush House when he discovered I worked at the World Service. I was in a very lowly position in the organisation, but told me I should feel privileged. And he was right. I was working at BBC English at the time, which specialised in teaching English as a foreign language, and represented the very essence of soft power. At the time, Managing Director John Tusa had a vision for the World Service in the post-Cold War era, which included a “Marshall Plan for the Mind” to promote British commercial and cultural interests in the post-Communist world. As the son of a Czech exile Tusa understood how vital the World Service was. Born in Zlín, in former Czechoslovakia, he and his family fled to Britain in 1939 to escape the Nazis. We need that vision now. READ MORE

News RoomBy No Comments4 Mins Read2 Views
BBC World Service, Aldwych. Photo by: Newscast Online/Alamy Could there be a more urgent need for an independent source of news and information with international reach and a historic track record of support for political dissidents and exiles from authoritarian regimes? If the BBC World Service didn’t exist, this would be a very good time to invent it. So it is excellent news that Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper has announced an increase in funding of £33m over the next three years. The settlement was said to be a priority for outgoing Director-General, Tim Davie, but MPs and campaign groups had warned of uncertainty as the deadline of the end of the financial year approached. At the end of February, Index coordinated a letter from nine free expression and journalism organisations calling on Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper to make the funding available and ensure a sustainable funding model for the future. Now the BBC is calling on the government to take back full responsibility for funding the service, as it did until 2014. The news of the funding settlement comes less than two months after the BBC announced the launch of an emergency radio programme for Iran in response to the internet blackout. In a move reminiscent of the work of Radio Free Europe and the World Service during the Cold War, BBC News Persian has been made available on mediumwave and shortwave to provide a half-hour programme broadcast every evening to Iran. Funding for the programme had been found from existing sources. But when Fiona Crack, Interim Global Director of BBC News announced the launch of the service in January, before the start of the current conflict, she made it clear that the cash could only be guaranteed until the end of March. In making the announcement, the foreign secretary paid tribute to the work of the World Service in Iran: “In a world of rising disinformation, the BBC World Service provides hundreds of millions with journalism they can trust and rely on. We are seeing in real time how the BBC Persian service is playing a crucial role in ensuring impartial, accurate news is reaching the Iranian people.” The BBC has developed a strong recent tradition of emergency radio news services launched in response to conflicts and disasters. In February, the BBC launched a news service for Ukraine following the Russian invasion. Emergency radio broadcasts were setup for Gaza and Sudan in 2023 and in Syria after the fall of Assad. In In April 2025, a BBC News Burmese satellite channel provided news in the aftermath of Myanmar earthquake. A report from the Public Accounts Committee warned of the wider consequences of cuts to the World Service. Speaking earlier this month. Conservative chair of the PAC, Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown said: ” It risks opening the door to propaganda from hostile states filling the void it leaves behind. At a time of heightened geopolitical tensions, the UK cannot afford to lose such a crucial soft power instrument.” Those who have worked at the World Service understand the importance of this element of the BBC’s output and the unique culture it engenders. Writing in The Times this week, columnist Libby Purves remembered her time as a young producer at the World Service HQ at Bush House in the 1970s. She told the story of taking an Angolan friend to lunch who explained how much the World Service had meant during her country’s civil war, “but when I pointed out one of its newsreaders eating lasagne at the next table she dared not be introduced lest emotion overwhelm her”. I had a similar experience with a Ghanian friend in the early 90s, who insisted on having our photo taken together outside Bush House when he discovered I worked at the World Service. I was in a very lowly position in the organisation, but told me I should feel privileged. And he was right. I was working at BBC English at the time, which specialised in teaching English as a foreign language, and represented the very essence of soft power. At the time, Managing Director John Tusa had a vision for the World Service in the post-Cold War era, which included a “Marshall Plan for the Mind” to promote British commercial and cultural interests in the post-Communist world. As the son of a Czech exile Tusa understood how vital the World Service was. Born in Zlín, in former Czechoslovakia, he and his family fled to Britain in 1939 to escape the Nazis. We need that vision now. READ MORE

Listen to the article

0:00
0:00

Could there be a more urgent need for an independent source of news and information with international reach and a historic track record of support for political dissidents and exiles from authoritarian regimes? If the BBC World Service didn’t exist, this would be a very good time to invent it.

So it is excellent news that Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper has announced an increase in funding of £33m over the next three years.

The settlement was said to be a priority for outgoing Director-General, Tim Davie, but MPs and campaign groups had warned of uncertainty as the deadline of the end of the financial year approached.

At the end of February, Index coordinated a letter from nine free expression and journalism organisations calling on Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper to make the funding available and ensure a sustainable funding model for the future. Now the BBC is calling on the government to take back full responsibility for funding the service, as it did until 2014.

The news of the funding settlement comes less than two months after the BBC announced the launch of an emergency radio programme for Iran in response to the internet blackout. In a move reminiscent of the work of Radio Free Europe and the World Service during the Cold War, BBC News Persian has been made available on mediumwave and shortwave to provide a half-hour programme broadcast every evening to Iran.

Funding for the programme had been found from existing sources. But when Fiona Crack, Interim Global Director of BBC News announced the launch of the service in January, before the start of the current conflict, she made it clear that the cash could only be guaranteed until the end of March.

In making the announcement, the foreign secretary paid tribute to the work of the World Service in Iran: “In a world of rising disinformation, the BBC World Service provides hundreds of millions with journalism they can trust and rely on. We are seeing in real time how the BBC Persian service is playing a crucial role in ensuring impartial, accurate news is reaching the Iranian people.”

The BBC has developed a strong recent tradition of emergency radio news services launched in response to conflicts and disasters. In February, the BBC launched a news service for Ukraine following the Russian invasion. Emergency radio broadcasts were setup for Gaza and Sudan in 2023 and in Syria after the fall of Assad. In In April 2025, a BBC News Burmese satellite channel provided news in the aftermath of Myanmar earthquake.

A report from the Public Accounts Committee warned of the wider consequences of cuts to the World Service. Speaking earlier this month. Conservative chair of the PAC, Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown said: ” It risks opening the door to propaganda from hostile states filling the void it leaves behind. At a time of heightened geopolitical tensions, the UK cannot afford to lose such a crucial soft power instrument.”

Those who have worked at the World Service understand the importance of this element of the BBC’s output and the unique culture it engenders. Writing in The Times this week, columnist Libby Purves remembered her time as a young producer at the World Service HQ at Bush House in the 1970s. She told the story of taking an Angolan friend to lunch who explained how much the World Service had meant during her country’s civil war, “but when I pointed out one of its newsreaders eating lasagne at the next table she dared not be introduced lest emotion overwhelm her”.

I had a similar experience with a Ghanian friend in the early 90s, who insisted on having our photo taken together outside Bush House when he discovered I worked at the World Service. I was in a very lowly position in the organisation, but told me I should feel privileged. And he was right.

I was working at BBC English at the time, which specialised in teaching English as a foreign language, and represented the very essence of soft power. At the time, Managing Director John Tusa had a vision for the World Service in the post-Cold War era, which included a “Marshall Plan for the Mind” to promote British commercial and cultural interests in the post-Communist world.

As the son of a Czech exile Tusa understood how vital the World Service was. Born in Zlín, in former Czechoslovakia, he and his family fled to Britain in 1939 to escape the Nazis.

We need that vision now.

Read the full article here

Fact Checker

Verify the accuracy of this article using AI-powered analysis and real-time sources.

Share.

The FSNN News Room is the voice of our in-house journalists, editors, and researchers. We deliver timely, unbiased reporting at the crossroads of finance, cryptocurrency, and global politics, providing clear, fact-driven analysis free from agendas.

Related Articles

Global Free Speech

The BBC clearly sees the value of television series That Mitchell and Webb Look. Marking the 20th anniversary of its original screening, the Beeb has re-released the series on iPlayer. But – and there is very often a “but” with these things – they’ve removed around 11 sketches from the BAFTA award-winning show. The official word is that these sketches don’t “work today”, which is polite speak for “they may cause offence”. The episodes singled out include scenes featuring a battle reenactment with characters in blackface, a contestant on a show wearing a burka and a lost tribe” in a garden centre. These sketches set out to challenge stereotypes, not to reinforce them; but 20 years on, this distinction seems to have been lost along the way. I’m a bit uncomfortable about this. I find it infantilising, to say the least. Can’t we trust audiences to make up their own minds, to switch off if they find the sketches in question unpalatable? Does the BBC think that we are just passive consumers, unable to disaggregate the mocking of racism from racism itself? These sketches set out to challenge stereotypes, not to reinforce them This act of censorship is distorting – of the shows, whose narratives and rhythms were built to include these sketches, and more broadly too. Conversations we were having 20 years ago have been erased, as if to suggest that they never happened. But they did! And with this erasure, the opportunity for thoughtful engagement and learning from our past is gone. “Let’s just pretend we were all lovely 20 years ago. It’s better that way” seems to be the message. Speaking as a minority myself, I find that knowing the nasty stuff that people said before – and indeed, still say today – is much more useful than pretending it never happened. This approach, I think, is also inconsistent. What it reveals is a cherry-picking (intended or not) of the groups that we can mock, and those that we can’t. Let’s face it, gender stereotypes are rarely deemed to have aged beyond the pale – if that were the case, we would have to wave goodbye to half the television made before the mid-2010s. Suppression like this sends a bad message to artists, namely that what they’re creating today may hold less value tomorrow. Or, even worse, that future audiences may deem them bigots – that Sword of Damocles hovering over the heads of any creative paying attention to the discourse of the moment. Suppression like this sends a bad message to artists The BBC’s decision reaffirms a broader trend. In 2020, Little Britain was removed from the iPlayer platform for similar reasons. It has since been reinstated – minus some sketches. Meanwhile, the UK’s arts space more broadly is seeing a retreat to the land of “safe”, as Index recently revealed in a year-long investigation into self-censorship in UK theatre. The BBC, it must be said, does remarkable stuff. The ongoing podcast investigation into the disappearance of US journalist Austin Tice is just one example. But this does not mean, however, that they don’t sometimes get it wrong. Chopping at That Mitchell and Webb Look is one example. Sure, the removal of the material isn’t the life-or-death story that Index often works on. Sure, Mitchell and Webb aren’t the faces of persecuted artists – they have huge platforms and agreed to the changes themselves. Still, one can’t help but think that the decision came from a place of conservatism, perhaps even fear. This is weak and dispiriting, indeed the very opposite of what enables creativity in the arts. We shouldn’t be encouraging this cultural timidity. Rather, we should harness culture and creativity as the starting points of a conversation about our here and now. That’s what the arts are for, after all. READ MORE

Add A Comment

Comments are closed.