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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

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