The UK risks damaging its soft power at a dangerous time
Opinion
Apart from being a bulwark against fake news and lies, the BBC World Service is a valuable arm of British culture and influence around the world. Cutting funding will bring irreparable damage.
A heart-warming piece of research on the international impact of the BBC, primarily through the World Service, was published this week.
The independent study by Tapestry looked at the views of international audiences on a range of news providers.
It found that 76% of influential audiences had heard of BBC News, that the BBC was the most trusted international news provider and the organisation was unmatched in driving favourable impressions of the UK.
That said, the BBC gets some of its decisions wrong — sometimes wretchedly, even dangerously, wrong.
The closing down of HardTalk at a time when there can hardly be a greater need for holding power to account in forensic detail comes immediately to mind.
Then there has been the years of relentless promotion of Nigel Farage, leader of the Brexit Party, Ukip and now Reform UK, with 39 appearances on Question Time.
Now, Farage and his deputy Richard Tice, two of Reform’s five MPs, seem to alternate on BBC news programming, putting into the shade Ed Davey, leader of the Liberal Democrats, with 72 MPs in the House of Commons.
Gold standard
But the BBC World Service is still the gold standard of BBC journalism and the source of great storytelling from all over the world with programmes such as Outlook.
The importance of the World Service — which claims to regularly reach audiences of 450m — is, if anything, growing in relative terms, given the attempts of US president Donald Trump to defund Voice of America, its US equivalent. It would be a shame if there were any attempt to defund the World Service in real terms, even at the margins.
It is a prime example of “soft power” on wheels, as the Tapestry research demonstrates.
Governments happily talk about the importance of soft power and influence as contributors to economic growth and exports, while casually cutting the budgets of organisations that deliver it.
Alas, foreign secretary David Lammy is no different.
Lammy has spoken about the importance of soft power and even set up a “soft power council” to boost its impact, bringing together representatives of broadcasting, the arts, education and sport.
Now, he has shown his commitment to one of the major arms of British soft power — the BBC World Service — by demanding tens of millions of pounds in savings from its budget.
Language services could be lost and all experience shows that the resulting vacuum is likely to be filled by Chinese state broadcaster CGTN or Russian’s state broadcaster RT.
According to The Guardian, the Foreign Office has asked the BBC to draw up a budget that is around £70m a year lower than the organisation says it needs — a figure well below average international inflation of 4.3%.
Valuable arm of influence
Emily Thornberry, the Labour MP who chairs the Foreign Affairs Committee, has warned that, in an age of disinformation when spreading lies is a new form of warfare, there has to be a fightback against government cuts to the World Service.
“The BBC World Service is a unique brand, trusted around the world. It represents our values and defends truth. This is absolutely not the moment to even think of cutting back the service. If anything, we should be expanding it,” Thornberry argued.
She hardly needed to explain why this might not be the best time to go for cuts — everything from the continuing Russian invasion of Ukraine and the chaos of Trump to allegations that starvation is being used as a weapon of war in Gaza and the current troubles in Kashmir.
The problem is that the Foreign Office is not a department protected from the Treasury’s budget cuts and 80% of World Service funding comes out of the aid budget.
It is compounded by the fact that the government has decided to cut the multibillion-pound aid budget by 50% and spend the money on defence instead.
Labour ministers are now saying very un-Labour things — as in many other areas of policy — that Britain is no longer going to be a global charity.
Unfortunately, the World Service, which is neither aid nor charity, is in danger of being damaged by such uncharitable attitudes.
Quite apart from being a bulwark against fake news and outright lies, the World Service is a positive and valuable arm of British culture and influence around the world.
It should be fully funded at least to break even in real terms directly by government without being entangled in intra-departmental cost-cutting wars.
Voices of the weak
At least the new Pope Leo XIV seems to be more appreciative of the work of the media than many politicians.
Pope Leo this week called for the release of imprisoned journalists around the world and expressed solidarity with those jailed “for seeking and reporting the truth”.
He told those in Rome reporting on the Papal election that the media must ensure “the precious gift” of free speech is protected.
The Pope did not mention Trump, but he is likely aware that the US president has been claiming that views he disagrees with must be “illegal”.
Pope Leo also appealed to journalists to reject the wars of words and images and the spread of fanaticism and hatred: “We do not need loud, forceful communication, but rather communication that is capable of listening and of gathering the voices of the weak who have no voice.”
In the sort of journalism that Pope Leo is seeking, he could well have been speaking about the World Service and Lammy should pay attention and do nothing to damage or restrict its output.
Raymond Snoddy is a media consultant, national newspaper columnist and former presenter of NewsWatch on BBC News. He writes for The Media Leader on Wednesdays — bookmark his column here.