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Transcript of A World of Influence

seminar and discussion, 4 November 2014

EMILY KASRIEL

Head of editorial partnerships and special projects, BBC Global News:

It’s fantastic to see so many of you here at BBC Broadcasting House in our Radio Theatre. I’m Emily Kasriel from the BBC World Service and I’m really delighted to be welcoming you here today to our seminar, A World of Influence, together with our partners: the BBC College of Journalism and the Reuters Institute.

Now, there are really two reasons why we’re holding this seminar here today. The first is, as I’m sure many of you know, that on the 1 April next year, 2014, the World Service is changing the way it’s been funded - so it was funded by the Foreign Office and is now going to be funded by the licence fee, like the rest of the BBC.

And actually, when the World Service was founded in 1928, it was funded by the licence fee. So for us it really kind of feels like we’re coming home.

But there’s also another reason: because now of course there’s really been a massive change in the international broadcasting environment. You’ve got a host of new players, both private and state, and there’s a lot of hot competition. They’re competing to try and share their content, but they’re also trying to share their values, and so we thought it would be a really interesting time to look at the landscape together.

Now, we’ve got a really fabulous panel. We’ve got a first panel and we’ve got more people coming on the panel. But we also know that there’s really a host of expertise amongst you here in our audience, so we will be turning to you both for questions and for comments. But, because we’ve got quite a lot to get through, I’d be really grateful if you keep them brilliant but brief.

Now we’re really, really excited to be having as our host today Stewart Purvis. And really there could be no better person to host tonight’s event because he is professor of TV journalism at City University in London. He’s also a non-executive director of Channel 4 News. But he was chief executive of ITN. He was also president of Euronews. And at Ofcom he was a regulator, where he regulated a host of different TV channels from CNN to al-Jazeera to RT - even to BBC World News.

So we actually really made an effort to get Stewart because we really, really wanted a non-BBC person to host this event. But I have to confess and be open with you that when we did a little bit of due diligence this didn’t quite appear to be the case, because when Stewart, early on his career… he was in the tranche of the very first lot of BBC News trainees. But, as we’re talking about 1969-72, we thought this was kind of alright and I hope you agree. It’s kind of kosher. So without further ado I’d like to welcome on to the stage here for our seminar, Stewart Purvis.

STEWART PURVIS

Professor of TV journalism at City University in London:

Thank you very much, Emily. Actually, I have a host of other previous convictions but there isn’t time for them all. But they may come out as we go along - but good evening everybody.

In the wonderfully understated words of Lord Howell, the chairman of the House of Lords’ select committee on the UK’s influence in the world, “Suddenly it’s getting a bit crowded”. The second half of the 20th Century saw the radio stations of the East and the West trying to win the hearts and minds of the people of central and eastern Europe, and pretty clearly the West won. In the first half of the 21st Century, what we’re seeing is not just the old Cold War powers but a whole host of new players fighting a truly global battle for influence. And this time the technology is not so much shortwave radio that some of us grew up on but the whole panoply of digital media, with perhaps international news channels getting the spotlight. Some of these new players have distinctly deep pockets, so who can tell who will win this time?

Now, over the next 90 minutes, as Emily has said, we aim to give you a snapshot of what’s happening in this landscape, and I suspect the nature and the scale of some of it will surprise you. We’re going to ask who the big beasts are out in that jungle, and we’re going to look to the future. To look how the changing patterns of technology, of media, of audience behaviour, politics and diplomacy - what effect they’re going to have on the next decade of trans-national broadcasting.

And, as there’s a whole planet to cover in an hour and-a-half, we’ve split the seminar into these two halves. Think of part one as a briefing on some of these key players, and who they are and what they’re hoping to achieve, and we’ve got a sort of cluster. There’s a cluster here of excellence about Russia; a cluster of excellence about China; and the rest of the world is represented by the two gentlemen at the end. We’ll come to them.

Then in part two there’s going to be musical chairs. Some people are staying; some people are going; some people are coming up from the front row - some people are going to join from the front row. It’s going to be fun I hope and you’ll get your chance to make your comments.

You know international radio broadcasting of course has been around for a long, long time. It’s an area where so many countries competed, but it’s been in the past decade with these new players, particularly some of whom never actually had an international radio service, who are offering this full package of digital media, TV channels, interactivity - and of course now they’re doing it in languages other than their own. And so I’ve taken that criteria of people - broadcasters who are transmitting globally in a language other than their own - to come up with this list of players. And if you think I’ve left somebody off please let me know. Now, like all good lists, it turns out to be a list of 10, so if we could just call that up.

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Now, I think it’s in alphabetical order, although of course the first thing actually is a logo, but al-Jazeera’s. I think the logo would be familiar to you. BBC… BBG, perhaps not familiar to those letters, but stands for the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which is the American federal agency which manages everything from the Voice of America to the Arabic TV language channel Al Hurra. And also of course the TV and radio services aimed at Cuba.

CCTV - obviously Central Chinese Television. Deutsche Welle, Euronews is a consortium of European public broadcasters. The next logo represents what’s called France Media Monde, which is a combination of RFI, the international radio service, France Vingt-Quatre or France 24, the TV news channel, which is of course in English as well as French, and I think other language services.

I think this is an appropriate moment to note that two RFI journalists were killed in Mali just a couple of days ago. It’s an almost now sad and inevitable part of the price that we have to pay for international newsgathering.

NHK from Japan - the public broadcaster there. Press TV from Iran, in English, and RT - what was previously known as Russia Today.

Right now I should say that all the channels we put on the list originate in the state and the public sector. We didn’t include anyone who came from a wholly commercial sector. Most of those channels do actually receive some state or public financial support, although of course some of them actually get revenue from advertising as well. Some say they are independent of state influence, some don’t bother to say that.

I suppose the obvious question is: why would so many governments spend so much money on these services? And the simple answer seems to be ‘soft power’. Now the term was first used by the Harvard professor Joseph Nye, and earlier this year, looking back, he wrote: “When Foreign Policy magazine first published my essay Soft Power in 1990, who would have expected that some day the term would be used by the likes of Hu Jintao and Vladimir Putin?” Well, we’re extremely grateful to Joe Nye for taking the trouble to record some special contributions for our event. So how does he see soft power?

VIDEO JOSEPH NYE:

Well, power changes over the centuries, as I argue in my book The Future of Power. If you look back to the 17th Century you’ll see that Spain benefited from the fact that it had colonies with gold bullion. And if you look a century later you see the Dutch doing very well with their dominance of commerce. And after that the French look very powerful because of their larger land mass and higher population. And then of course in the 19th Century you see Britain taking the lead with its industrial revolution and its naval power. But today, in a global information age, really in an age where instead of just whose army wins it’s often whose story wins, and the story not just of states but sometimes of non-state actors.

So the resources that produce power have changed in a world where information is at a premium. The power that comes from narrative becomes increasingly important, and narrative depends very much on credibility. If you are not credible, nobody’s going to believe your narrative and that’s one of the reasons why propaganda is not very useful. As somebody once put it, the best propaganda is not propaganda because if your message, your narrative, is seen as propaganda it doesn’t produce soft power or attractiveness. It simply gets people to turn it off and to pay no attention. So the ability to establish credibility is critical in an information age.

If a thug puts a gun to your head, the thug can make you do things you wouldn’t otherwise do, or indeed kill you. But over the long term it’s not likely that just guns are going to produce this kind of narrative, and so in that sense I think force still matters. Hard power still matters, but… and it can sometimes prevail over soft power… but in the long run people don’t live by the sword alone. They also live by words and humans are affected by words, by stories, by narrative. And so in that sense, in the long run I think soft power has a very important effect.

STEWART PURVIS

Professor of TV journalism at City University in London:

So not just the hard power of guns and swords but increasingly the soft power of words. Now, given that, who does Professor Nye believe wields soft power most effectively today?

VIDEO JOSEPH NYE:

Well, soft power can be wielded by individuals, by groups, all sorts of non-state actors as well as states. A rock star, somebody like Bono who goes on the road in a cause of famine relief or poverty relief develops a good deal of soft power and credibility. Various non-profit organisations that are defending the climate or promoting development - Oxfam would be a case in point - can develop its own soft power.

And governments, obviously, compete to develop soft power. Sometimes small governments are quite effective at it. Norway is a good example, or Singapore is another good example of a small state, five or six million people, which is able to generate soft power. For large countries like the United States, or like China or Russia, the problem is often that there’s a mistrust of the government and therefore the soft power comes in many cases from the civil society. For example, American soft power is probably generated more by everything from Hollywood to Harvard than it is from the American governmental statements. And I think that’s an indication again of the fact that anybody can generate soft power but their capacity to generate it depends upon their capacity to establish credibility, and that means a degree of openness which I think is going to affect which countries are better able to generate this soft power.

STEWART PURVIS

Professor of TV journalism at City University in London:

So we’re very grateful to Professor Nye for those contributions and we have one more in part two. And later on we may want to debate whether it’s appropriate for an editorially independent broadcaster to say that they are part of their nation’s soft power strategy. But let’s be clear: some of the world’s fastest growing international broadcasters have no problem with saying that.

Let’s talk first about Chinese Central Television, and we’ve got the first of our sort of state channel-by-channel charts, this one for CCTV. The structure – well, it’s clearly part of a government ministry. It’s available in five languages. It’s interesting I think that its mission includes that line about breaking the Western voice’s monopoly on the news.

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Audience figures - I think all the audience figures we’re going to have to say are normally sourced from the broadcaster’s website. I always think the global figures have to be taken with a pinch of salt. They normally refer to the number of households that can receive the service rather than those that necessarily watch it. Funding therefore… extraordinary sums really being invested by the Chinese government.

Special features is just a posh name for the bits I’m interested in - of which a major hub in Nairobi for Africa Live… you already saw from the video this emphasis on Africa that we’ve seen from CCTV.

And the other interesting element for me is CCTV Content, which is a syndication of content to national broadcasters to try to get Chinese content into the national services. Because amongst all the international broadcasters there are a number of national services continuing.

Now, to talk and hear more about CCTV, I’m really delighted that Jianing Shen, who is the bureau chief of China Central Television in Europe, is here, and she’s chosen to make her contribution to our event in the form of a statement from the floor. So Jianing Shen, would you like to say a few words for us? Thank you.

JIANING SHEN

Europe bureau chief, CCTV:

Nice to be here. CCTV is the national TV station of China, which was established in 1938. At the present time CCTV has 37 channels that are watched by seven hundred million viewers. It is also the only TV station in the world that broadcasts in six working languages. You just omitted the French. CCTV is now carried over by cable companies in 171 countries.

The global newscasting network of CCTV consists of 70 overseas bureaux, including seven hub bureaux. The total staff number of the overseas bureaux is 446, among which 157 are local employees. Besides, as important supplement of the overseas reporting crew, there are also 70 freelance reporters. As the network of CCTV overseas bureaux has been constantly improved, the ability of newsgathering has also been continually enhanced.

Take CCTV Chinese news channel, for example. In 2010 the number of international news pieces were 4,661. Only one year later the number became 13,647 - 192% more than the previous year. In 2012, the number of pieces were 16,562 - 21% more than the previous year. In 2012 the presentation of international news gathered originally by CCTV overseas reporters reached 54%, the first time that original news took the majority. Thank you.

STEWART PURVIS

Professor of TV journalism at City University in London:

Thank you very much indeed, Jianing Shen. And I hope that you’ll feel free to contribute as we go along. To talk about CCTV we’ve got Xiaoling Zhang, who’s the head of the School of Contemporary Chinese Studies at the University of Nottingham’s Chinese campus at Ningbo, and Dr Rana Mitter, who’s professor of the history of politics of modern China at the University of Oxford.

Let’s first talk about the sheer scale of this operation. I was at a presentation this morning about British digital television which has explained that in certain homes now, depending on the technology you’ve got, you can actually watch four Chinese channels on British digital television. That’s CCTV News, CCTV 4, CCTV 9 and a non-CCTV channel. And so given that on a kind of global basis I suppose really first to you, Xiaoling Zhang - how do you manage success of your China? I mean, what does success look like? What do you expect out of an investment of this scale, do you think, from CCTV’s point of view?

XIAOLING ZHANG

Head of contemporary Chinese studies, University of Nottingham:

Well, ideally CCTV should conduct a survey on an audience, but I don’t think this has been done like many other broadcasters. So researchers like myself have been trying to reach out to the audience, to people who do watch CCTV, and say what they think, how they feel about CCTV - so it is the audience really. Well, it has the presence…

STEWART PURVIS

Professor of TV journalism at City University in London:

And what are you hearing back from those that you have. I think we’re all fascinated to know what somebody in Africa would actually make of CCTV.

XIAOLING ZHANG

Head of contemporary Chinese studies, University of Nottingham:

The result could be disappointing for CCTV to hear, because the people don’t really spend a lot of time watching it. People flip through the channels and they happen to chance upon it, so not very many people at the moment are watching it in the UK at least.

STEWART PURVIS

Professor of TV journalism at City University in London:

Rana, again what success… how do the Chinese tell if this has been worth it?

RANA MITTER

Professor of the history and politics of modern China, University of Oxford:

Well, I think I’d add two things to what Xiaoling has just said. The first actually is anecdotal and therefore possibly unreliable, but maybe on a slightly more positive note… I have a friend in New Zealand, which is one of the countries which takes or has taken CCTV coverage for one of its overnight parts of one of its channels, and actually he didn’t know until I told him that China was the origins of CCTV. He just saw the logo and had assumed that it was some variation of CNN so that suggests…

STEWART PURVIS

Professor of TV journalism at City University in London:

But you can understand that, watching that clip, can’t you?

RANA MITTER

Professor of the history and politics of modern China, University of Oxford:

You can absolutely understand that. I have to say that you know, without wishing to speak of absent friends who are not here, there is often, you know, an element of the way in which news is presented on CNN which wouldn’t perhaps be the way that the BBC does it. And while I’m not suggesting the same thing is true of CCTV, it suggests that there are elements of credibility about the product in the terms that Jo and I used that are in some way meaningful.

On the other hand I would also add to the element of caution that Xiaoling has put forward. I mean, how much people actually get from television news stations is a big and important and hard to answer question, but I would say success might come actually from laying down on the ground space that will be useful not right now, not even next year, but in five and 10 years.

We should note that the one country that isn’t represented either on your grid or on this panel here tonight is India. Now, if you’re thinking of a large democratic country with a lively public sphere that ought to be in this market, surely it’s the Indian government, and yet it’s not. So in that case China may be actually setting down the grounds for taking space that otherwise might belong to another rising Asian superpower in the near future.

STEWART PURVIS

Professor of TV journalism at City University in London:

We are actually going to come to India in part two but I think that’s an important point. Let’s just look at this now - this issue about credibility that you go to. There was a piece in the Guardian this weekend that talked about the tug of war between the Chinese communist party and the market-driven and increasingly questioning media. I take that to be a reference to the tension between the state and domestic media. Can you have a credible international service if you’ve got that kind of background of internal tension? Rana, first?

RANA MITTER

Professor of the history and politics of modern China, University of Oxford:

You can but it is in some ways limited in terms of its credibility, and one of the biggest problems that comes from party control over the content is that stories about perhaps the single most important element from the mission point of view can’t be easily covered, and those are stories about China. I mean, anyone who’s kept an eye on the news from China in the last year will know that there have been significant political upheavals. They have been reported internationally; they’ve been reported in Hong Kong and Taiwan. They’re not generally reported in great detail within China itself. And that tends to be reflected in the international coverage as well. Now I think that there is a problem that will have to be dealt with in terms of being able to give a wide-ranging and nuanced coverage of goings-on in the country that produces the reports before that international credibility is available. And I think the party control makes that difficult to do at the moment.

STEWART PURVIS

Professor of TV journalism at City University in London:

Xiaoling, you’re actually based in China. How does this issue look to you?

XIAOLING ZHANG

Head of contemporary Chinese studies, University of Nottingham:

I will add a point to what Rana has said. I believe that actually we do see changes, especially in the overseas, like CCTV Africa. We do see CCTV experimenting with certain things that it wouldn’t do…

STEWART PURVIS

Professor of TV journalism at City University in London:

Wouldn’t do domestically?

XIAOLING ZHANG

Head of contemporary Chinese studies, University of Nottingham:

At home, that’s right, because you wouldn’t really find CCTV talking about human rights and things like this - democracy, election. But on CCTV Africa you can find a lot of programmes on it. So my finding is that actually CCTV is actually experimenting. It’s an experimenting ground, yes, overseas.

STEWART PURVIS

Professor of TV journalism at City University in London:

That’s very interesting. Now I wanted to come back to this CCTV Content that I mentioned briefly. Peter Horrocks, who’s going to be speaking later, was talking to the House of Lords’ committee on this, on the soft power issue, and he said that China was using its financial muscle to pay for access to airwaves by paying national broadcasters to use CCTV Content - in some cases squeezing out BBC output. We should explain that there is a market in selling international news to national broadcasters. The BBC regards this as a sort of partnership venture and is happy to share content, but I think the allegation is that CCTV actually pays national broadcasters to run CCTV Content, thus crowding out the BBC and indeed other commercially based ventures. I mean, do any of you have any sort of information about that at all, from your experience?

XIAOLING ZHANG

Head of contemporary Chinese studies, University of Nottingham:

Well, it’s aid, it’s aid. Sharing content. It’s aid, direct aid to some - yes, broadcasters.

STEWART PURVIS

Professor of TV journalism at City University in London:

Is it aid?

RANA MITTER

Professor of the history and politics of modern China, University of Oxford:

I think it’s hard to define it as aid in the wider sense. I mean, it’s not unknown I think for media providers and operators in other spheres to operate what I think is, you know, sometimes questionable marketing tactics when trying to get into a particular area. But I think it should be noted as well - this is one of the things I hope we’ll consider more widely - that if there’s no appetite whatsoever for the material then, however, you know, even if the price is free, it’s unlikely to be taken up because of course the receiving broadcasters have a commercial interest in showing stuff that people want to watch.

STEWART PURVIS

Professor of TV journalism at City University in London:

Can I say, with CCTV, would you like an opportunity to comment on this or is that comment on aid to broadcasters around the world otherwise known as giving them content they otherwise might buy?

JIANING SHEN

Europe bureau chiefUROPE BUREAU CHIEF, CCTV:

I just want to say CCTV Content is just an experiment for CCTV. It’s a kind of experiment for us to try to establish some kind of TV news agency, just like… agency. Agency, they have established a CNC that’s a kind of international news channel, and at the same time CCTV tried to do something like the TV news agency, just like APTN - just the beginning of experiment. We don’t know if they will charge money in the future but at present time it’s free.

STEWART PURVIS

Professor of TV journalism at City University in London:

Right, so this is a kind of free offer to get them to sign up maybe later, is it?

JIANING SHEN

Europe bureau chief, CCTV:

Yeah, maybe later.

STEWART PURVIS

Professor of TV journalism at City University in London:

Peter, we’ll come to you later but I ought to give you the chance to comment on this as well, since you brought it to people’s attention.

PETER HORROCKS

Director, BBC World Service:

All I’d say is that, in the interests of fairness, that the French and the Americans do it as well. So because we largely manage… we try and make money from our content when we can on the commercial side and then we don’t subsidise it. But other international broadcasters do so - the Chinese are following in other people’s footsteps on that.

STEWART PURVIS

Professor of TV journalism at City University in London:

Thank you very much for the time being. We’re going to move on to Russia now and Russia Today. So let’s hear some facts about Russia Today or RT. It’s actually part of the Novosti news agency. There are three languages there and to report world news from a Russian perspective… I’ll come back to that in a second. There are again the audience figures and the number of countries. There too is the large sums of money being invested and I’m going to come to two elements here. One is the dispute with Ofcom about impartiality, and I think a fascinating element about RT is the sheer amount of content produced in the US, sometimes about the US, and indeed the amount of original content being produced by RT in its bases around the world.

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Now, to talk about RT, let’s welcome Laura Smith from the London office of RT. Welcome Laura.

We’d like to talk about regulation, and now I could bore for Britain on this. I could actually bore for Russia on this as well but let me explain that most if not all of those broadcasters on that list, for their transmissions within Europe, they are regulated by Ofcom, the British regulator. And indeed Russia Today is one of them. Now by coincidence this morning, Ofcom issued an adjudication in which they said that RT had broken the broadcasting code in Britain - two clauses in the code - by showing video - I think it was three men on the Syrian border; somebody set light to them and you saw them being effectively burnt alive. Now that’s under taste and decency.

I think a more significant dispute with Ofcom was last year over due impartiality, and this was about your coverage of Libya. And I just want to get a couple of quotes that they came up with. And basically it seemed that possibly RT was arguing it both ways, because it was arguing on the one hand that it did present news from a Russian point of view and that was a good thing - and why not, let’s have plurality. But on the other it was arguing that actually it was an impartial service which frequently criticised the Russian government. It seemed to me you can’t quite be both. You’re either saying this is a Russian point of view and we believe people should have a chance to see it, or you’re saying, actually, we’re running an impartial service - just as impartial as the BBC or ITV. So what is your position on that?

LAURA SMITH

London correspondent, RT:

I think we do do both. I mean, we, you know, we are talking about news from a Russian perspective often purely because Russians don’t have another voice on the world platform. But we are also presenting the news from a different perspective and that’s in our tagline. That’s, you know, what we aim to do.

STEWART PURVIS

Professor of TV journalism at City University in London:

But, I mean, how frequently is frequently, criticising the Russian government. Could you give us an example of where you might have criticised the Russian government?

LAURA SMITH

London correspondent, RT:

We have obviously, as we were saying about CCTV, you know… I think, as you grow as a channel, if you are linked to the government in any way then you have to produce content that is covering domestic policy. And we have done that recently in a lot of cases because we’ve had a lot of domestic policy that is interesting on the international stage. So we’ve had the Pussy Riot trial; we have had the laws on homosexuality in Russia; and we’ve also most recently had Greenpeace. And we’ve run a lot of content on that - not just in the news, but we’ve had a lot of debate shows, chat shows, documentaries that are looking at all perspectives of those problems. So I think we’re doing a pretty good job there.

STEWART PURVIS

Professor of TV journalism at City University in London:

Victor, you watch quite a lot of this service. What’s your perspective on it?

VICTOR BALAGADDE

Editor, Kommersant UK:

Well, Russia Today as a channel is a state-owned channel, and it’s one of the whole web, which we have all different international medias in the world. And, I mean, the reason and the aim and the goal of Russian TV, as a TV channel broadcasting to the international audience, is to pass the message of the Russian government - to bring the agenda of the Russian government - which it wants to pass to the international audience through the TV channel. And if you question whether it’s partial or not, I would say that it’s a voice of Russia. That’s why it is called Russia Today.

STEWART PURVIS

Professor of TV journalism at City University in London:

Well, there is actually a parallel radio station called The Voice of Russia, isn’t there? Which doesn’t leave anyone in any doubt what that is.

VICTOR BALAGADDE

Editor, Kommersant UK:

That’s a radio station, yes.

STEWART PURVIS

Professor of TV journalism at City University in London:

But here is a TV channel licensed in the UK to allow it to transmit across the whole of the European Union, for which there is a requirement for due impartiality. Do you, from what you see… is this channel meeting that due impartiality requirement?

VICTOR BALAGADDE

Editor, Kommersant UK:

If I look at myself as a consumer of the news, I think in order to get the impartial news today you have to get your news from different sources of information and to compare those sources of information. Because each media has its own agenda which it owns to pass. Just like the BBC, Russia Today, Voice of America, they all have their own agendas which they want to pass to the global audience. And for someone who is well educated enough and well informed enough, I think he has to obtain his news from different sources of information and Russia Today should be one of them.

STEWART PURVIS

Professor of TV journalism at City University in London:

Right, now that’s very much the first argument I put from RT, which is let’s have a plurality of voices. I have to say that British statute doesn’t recognise that way of doing it. I mean, it may be that that’s inevitably where we’re heading - that there actually just are a whole series of TV channels which represent different points of view, but we haven’t actually got to that position yet. I know in the audience we’ve got Kyrill Dissanaayake from BBC Monitoring. Welcome, Kyrill. I think you get paid to watch things like this, so kind of tell us about what you make of it.

KYRILLDISSANAAYAKE:

Senior monitoring journalist, BBC Monitoring

Yes, it’s quite a privilege. We don’t actually, we’re not paid to watch Russia TV - sorry Russia Today - because we tend to focus on Russian language channels so we watch the main Russian state TV channels, for example. I mean, actually the kind of point that we’ve been coming to is sort of the nature of objectivity and credibility. Because we think, for example the BBC, we might be deluding ourselves, I don’t know, but we think that our credibility comes from our… maybe it might not be objectivity but at least balance, and presenting different points of view. And we feel that we have an obligation to present that kind of rounded view within our own kind of programmes. Whereas, I think, you know, probably RT’s argument would be, well, the fact of the matter is that there are channels such as Fox News who have a particular agenda and so all they’re doing is offering viewers something different.

I mean the question that we kind of touched upon earlier about what line is kind of Russia Today actually running… Vladimir Putin, he visited the kind of revamped headquarters back in June, and he was asked about this during a kind of chat with journalists at RT, and he said “Certainly the channel is funded by the government so it cannot help but reflect the Russian government’s official position on the events in our country and in the rest of the world one way or another. But I’d like to underline again that we never intended this channel as any kind of apologist for the Russian political line, whether domestic or foreign.”

Now to me, that’s kind of quite a tricky… it might work as an argument but it’s quite tricky to make that happen actually as a broadcaster: to try and reflect a position but not apologise for it. So I think it is quite a tricky thing that RT is trying to do.

STEWART PURVIS

Professor of TV journalism at City University in London:

OK, I want to bring in, if I can, Oliver. Oliver, you’ve been writing about these issues, I think, and RT. Do you want to give us your thoughts and then perhaps give Laura the chance to come back?

OLIVER BULLOUGH

Journalist:

Happy to and I’m delighted to see Laura. I’ve actually got quite a lot of time for RT. It’s not actually called Russia Today any more of course. RT, and RT I think is actually quite… not just a rebranding. It did actually reflect a substantial change in the channel. When it was launched it was deathly dull. It was about Russia, for foreigners, sort of… I was trying to come up with a parallel while sitting here. It’s a bit like BBC Hereford and Worcester trying to report in Russian to Russians without changing its content and expecting Russians to be interested. It was very boring. It did change dramatically after the 2008 war and now its coverage is very lively. It’s a massive hit on YouTube. It gets an awful lot of views with these very short, extremely punchy reports - a lot of them criticising Western financial institutions in a way that really, I think gets a lot of sympathy with particularly a lot of young people in America.

What’s interesting about it is I don’t really think this reflects a Russian position at all. I don’t think Russia really gets anything out of it. Certainly the Russian government doesn’t behave in a way markedly different to Western governments, and Russian banks and institutions don’t behave in a way markedly different to Western institutions. I think what is interesting is that RT sort of attacks Western institutions and Western governments, I think, to try and remove them - remove credibility from in the eyes of their own citizens, which is a sort of strangely zero sum approach to propaganda.

Actually it’s quite clever. Since they’ve sort of given up on trying to persuade people that Russia is, I mean… they tried to make people think that Russia was nice and… because it was very boring… so instead they have just tried to chip away at the other side and I think they’re doing a very good job. The viewing figures… again, I think the viewing figures, about how many people watch it on their TVs, are possibly a bit dubious. But how many people watch it on Youtube is absolutely enormous.

STEWART PURVIS

Professor of TV journalism at City University in London:

Thanks very much. I want to pick up on that and then come to Laura. So, I’ve just spent the weekend in New York and on the NBC Today show is one of the most watched breakfast shows in America - up comes an advert for RT. Now that slot’s going to cost you money. So the Russians are doing this and they don’t get much out of it. I mean, Laura, are the Russians getting much out of paying you and the rest of the colleagues on RT?

LAURA SMITH:

RT

I think maybe it comes back to soft power. I think possibly you know if everyone else is doing it - the Chinese are doing it, the French are doing it, the Germans are doing, it as we saw earlier - and, you know, I don’t think that you could be left out of that. And, as Oliver said, we are attracting a young audience and I think going forward into the future that’s going to serve us extremely well.

STEWART PURVIS

Professor of TV journalism at City University in London:

Victor, your perspective on this? Is it worth the money from Russia’s point of view?

VICTOR BALAGADDE

Editor, Kommersant UK:

Well, I think all the video clips which we had here about the importance of soft power, or what they call public relations these days, this just answers all the funding which is done by the Russian government. It is very important and there are a number of stories specially for the last year which were covered probably by RT much better than by any other medias - like taking all the Edward Snowden saga and the way it went through.

STEWART PURVIS

Professor of TV journalism at City University in London:

There has been an enormous amount of Edward Snowden coverage, hasn’t there?

VICTOR BALAGADDE

Editor, Kommersant UK:

I think it’s a treasure for RT, and I mean this storyline is fantastic. And it will still go on, and there are lots of things to hear and you won’t hear them on BBC or CNN, so here you can. You go and watch RT.

OLIVER BULLOUGH

Journalist:

I do think Laura is being slightly disingenuous by saying it criticises Putin in the same way as it criticises Western leaders. I have seen RT interview, in inverted commas, Obama animated by a Lego Darth Vader figurine. And I also saw it refer to George Osborne, saying he would happily throw a baby into a fire to get a good deal on a financial derivative. I haven’t heard it say that about Putin, but it’s part of its life and style.

STEWART PURVIS

Professor of TV journalism at City University in London:

We will watch with interest and look out for… let’s move on to what I was going to say are two of the older players… and that’s not to refer to the seniority of their representatives but just to talk about people who were in this business perhaps more than 10 years ago. Let’s start with al-Jazeera, part of the Qatar Media Corporation. It’s in Arabic, it’s in English, and then in what we used to call Serbo-Croat but must now call Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, aimed at obviously the former Yugoslavia. The mission, I think an interesting line: “diversity of perspective from under-reported regions”, a sort of what Americans would say ‘we’re on your side’ to other countries in the third world.

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English available in a lot of homes and we’ll talk about how that’s come about, with a lot of money and a lot of distribution particularly in the United States. And in a sense, it always seems to me, it’s in a battle with RT for American homes. Now to talk about that we’ve got John Owen. We’ll come to him in a second, but we’re also going to talk about the BBC.

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Obviously the BBC services set out there, perhaps in rather more languages on television than most of us realise, six I think - please correct us Peter if we’ve got that wrong - and of course a whole series of other language services in radio and online. Interesting, their mission statement doesn’t make actually any national mention of the UK or British, but in a sense talks about impartial reporting and analysis of international news. Quarter of a billion people watching every week or listening or watching online.

The funding we should just briefly say: BBC World News TV in English is commercially funded only - no public funding of that. The radio and the non-English TV services are funded as of today from the Foreign Office under a grant in aid. But, as has been explained at the beginning, next year from the licence fee. And I think special features - well, you’ve walked under the first special feature you’ve got outside - and under one roof you’ve got TV and radio and online, national and international; all in the same place now. And Tony Hall announced that he’s going to double the reach of 256 million to half a billion people in 10 years’ time. This I think came as something of a shock to people who worked on the service, but I’m sure they’re working hard at implementing their master’s orders.

John, we’re very grateful here. We should say that the team spent an enormous amount of trouble trying to get an al-Jazeera representative and you are captioned as former al-Jazeera representative. You’re a colleague at City University in London; you used to work for CBC. John, the Qatar Media Corporation, let’s talk about this issue of the relationship between funding and independent editorial decisions. How does the money kind of get from the Qatar Media Corporation to the newsroom, and what does the Qatar Media Corporation expect in return?

JOHN OWEN

Former executive, al-Jazeera:

Well, I don’t know but I think you really have to… and first of all I would want to say it was a privilege for several years to work for al-Jazeera in programmes, and I really enjoyed my association with it. I have no connection with it now, to make it very clear. I think you have to back up and look at Qatar in 1996 when al-Jazeera was created, and look at its role in the world then, and now look at Qatar today. The money has obviously always been going directly into the news organisation, but I never sat in on a meeting in my two years or never heard anyone say we have to do this to get this kind of financial support from the Qatar government. It doesn’t work that way. Just a huge amount of money that seems to pour into al-Jazeera and the Turkish Balkans, and you didn’t even mention the 18 sports channels which also have a commercial base.

STEWART PURVIS

Professor of TV journalism at City University in London:

So it seems kind of against… to think am I being naïve… all this money is being invested at a time when Qatar… I think in ’96 most of us didn’t even know that Qatar had a foreign policy. We sure do now.

JOHN OWEN

Former executive, al-Jazeera:

That’s the critical issue. That’s the critical issue.

STEWART PURVIS

Professor of TV journalism at City University in London:

Its interventions, if you like, in Syria, its support for Morsi in Egypt… I mean, would we be naïve to expect that there wasn’t going to be some impact on the coverage?

JOHN OWEN

Former executive, al-Jazeera:

Well, that’s where you get to those who are especially critical on the Arabic side, and those of you in the audience… one of my colleagues is here who watches carefully the Arabic output. They you do get criticism that al-Jazeera’s reporting has modified in relation to al-Jazeera and Qatar’s role in the world. Frankly I don’t see it on the English side. And I never have seen anyone point to it, document that it’s deviated its reporting on the basis of al-Jazeera playing a meaningful role in the region - putting three billion into arming the Syrian opposition, playing a role in the Arab Spring, being essentially put into a very criticised role in covering the Morsi government when it was in power.

But I’ve never seen that money and Qatar’s now big role in the world in evidence in the reporting on English television. Again, those of you who speak Arabic would have to speak to that issue and I know some of the audience. I would be interested in hearing their point of view but I think, as I said, the narrative speaks for itself. If people would find it to be partisan, I think they’d turn away from it. But as we know it’s found a real following online in the world, and I think also the thing that I think is most important about al-Jazeera, apart from its very good news service and I can speak to that from my own personal experience, I think it’s the amazing array of in-depth long-form programmes.

STEWART PURVIS

Professor of TV journalism at City University in London:

Peter Horrocks from the BBC - just take stock of what’s been said about al-Jazeera; what’s been said about Russia Today. Imagine you’re a man from outer space and you land and you start watching British television and reading the newspapers. You find out that the British government pretty much unilaterally changed the way the World Service was going to be funded. There was no public consultation. It was pretty much a diktat. We find the BBC executives are being questioned by MPs and attacked by MPs almost weekly at select committees. We find out that the Foreign Office still has a veto on which languages the World Service may choose to cancel. We see Grant Shapps, the chairman of the Conservative Party, standing up and pretty much laying down the law. You might wonder: is the BBC any less affected by political pressure or any more affected than the al-Jazeeras? I mean, to a certain extent you seem to be in a more difficult place than what we’re hearing about some of these other channels.

PETER HORROCKS

Director, BBC World Service:

Well, there’s clearly a lot of pressure but the question is whether it impacts on our editorial independence, and none of those examples that you gave are evidence of that.

STEWART PURVIS

Professor of TV journalism at City University in London:

But they’re evidence the National Audit Office wants to know more and more about the way the BBC spends its money. That sounds like political pressure to me.

PETER HORROCKS

Director, BBC World Service:

Yes, but the point is: what’s the mission, as you rightly drew attention to? It’s not about representing Britain’s interests. In fact the new operating licence that the BBC Trust has published as part of this transition that’s happening next April explicitly says that the job of our international news is not to represent any particular national or commercial interest. So it eschews that national interest, and we absolutely don’t represent that national interest on air, although we’ve heard that’s what happens elsewhere.

STEWART PURVIS

Professor of TV journalism at City University in London:

But the BBC’s purpose - it says that your job is to represent the BBC, represent the world to Britain, and Britain to the world. I mean, how can you do that without representing the British national interest?

PETER HORROCKS

Director, BBC World Service:

Britain’s values to the world… absolutely, we do do that. And those values also include the independent mindedness that we represent, so there is a paradox there. Of course I can see that. But the reason why the BBC and the World Service has been so strong for more than 80 years, and continues to be so despite the huge challenges that this competition that you’ve been outlining this evening represents, is because we stick absolutely to that independent editorial spirit. And crucially our audiences around the world show that they still believe that’s what we do, because the level of trust in the BBC is still extremely high throughout the world.

STEWART PURVIS

Professor of TV journalism at City University in London:

Now, you use that word paradox. It’s funny that you should use that word when you appeared before the House of Lords’ select committee in the context of this phrase ‘soft power’. Now, Maria Miller, I was at a speech she gave; this is the British culture minister. She said: “To be blunt, TV reaches the parts that our ambassadors don’t.” That’s quite an interesting quote in itself, isn’t it? She said: “I think that soft power agenda is one of the BBC’s priorities and I will be working with them, and other broadcasters, on this very important issue.” Tony Hall, the director general of the BBC, from the audience, got up and said “This soft power agenda, how can we help?” he said. There was a slight intake of breath from some of us in the audience. So just talk us through. Is the BBC part of the British government’s soft power agenda or not?

PETER HORROCKS

Director, BBC World Service:

The World Service doesn’t use that terminology. What we talk about is, as Joe and I refer to, the ability to create attraction through admiration for values and the way that we conduct our broadcasting. And we absolutely create influence for the UK through taking a long-term approach to representing the best of British values around the world. But what we don’t do, and this has been the case obviously throughout that long period of direct Foreign Office funding, is to represent the short-term UK government interests. So when Nick Robinson reported on the Syria vote in the Commons he talked about David Cameron’s humiliating defeat and how he’d lost control of his foreign policy. That degree of independent reporting absolutely is what we stand for.

There are people, and clearly politicians in the Foreign Office, over many years who do use the terminology of soft power and who have supported the BBC and funded it, and it is a shorthand that gets used in terms of a perspective on representing the national interests. But it’s very important that the World Service does not explain itself in that way. We explain ourselves through the complete editorial independence and impartiality, and taking a global perspective.

STEWART PURVIS

Professor of TV journalism at City University in London:

OK, we’re going to have to be very brief now because I keep thinking we’re at the end of this session, which is still a bit of a time away. We’ve got to get questions but this issue of growth, you know, in a sense particularly your target, Peter, which is to double the audience in 10 years in a very competitive space.

John, al-Jazeera… I’m going to say just back from the States… Al-Jazeera America adverts everywhere. They bought the distribution network of Al Gore; made Al Gore a multi-millionaire in the process. So - but you can’t just buy your way to people to watch; you can’t pay them to watch, can you?

JOHN OWEN

Former executive, al-Jazeera:

No, and you know again I think you have to look at al-Jazeera, the al-Jazeera America project from two perspectives. If you’re a young journalist; if you’re looking for work; if you’re looking for another channel that’s going to give you an opportunity to do relatively impartial journalism - you love the experiment which means 900 jobs, 12 bureaux across the United States. Again, a form of cable television different from MSN, NBC and Fox and the others. So that’s all to the good and I think that’s exciting. But then you step back and you go: what in the world are they doing this for? Because do they really believe that Americans are going to turn to al-Jazeera for in-depth information about the United States? And that’s where some of us are critics. Because you wonder why they agreed to a relationship with the cable channels that would mean giving up streaming of its worldwide channel that would reach - and we know from very good recent studies there’s a small niche of those interested in international journalism including the BBC. But the same people would read the Economist, listen to BBC World Service, find the Guardian, would turn to al-Jazeera for the world view - and I find it just puzzling that they would roll the dice in such a huge way to create al-Jazeera America. But again, if in the long run they prove the critics wrong, including me - and they’re also, by the way, trying to start an al-Jazeera Plus online service to compensate for the loss of all these eyeballs online. So it’s a puzzlement.

STEWART PURVIS

Professor of TV journalism at City University in London:

We’ll see many multi-million dollars later whether it’s any clearer. That completes our look at some of these players. In the second half we’re going to broaden the discussion, look across national boundaries and take your comments on the issues. While we have the musical chairs here bringing on the panel, and Peter is particularly going to stay here so we’ll be offering you the opportunity to talk to Peter about, for instance, the change in the funding arrangements, let us remind ourselves that these channels contain more than just news bulletins. There’s a variety of factual content on offer from… you’re going to see clips from, amongst others, Deutsche Welle, CCTV. We’ve got a clip in from CNN as well, the BBC’s Persian service, al-Jazeera English and Press TV. But we begin with RT, who’ve signed a familiar American face to those of us who watch international broadcasting. In fact, as you watch this first clip, you may need to pinch yourself to remind yourself that you are watching something called Russia Today.

STEWART PURVIS

Professor of TV journalism at City University in London:

And Iran’s take on the American dream from Press TV ends our clips and leads us into a question time panel who are, from the right, Dr Daya Thussu, who is a professor of international communication at the India Media Centre at University of Westminster, and a writer on international broadcasting. Hans Laroes is a media consultant who’s leading the EBU’s public service media project and was formerly the editor in chief of the Dutch public broadcaster NOS. Welcome back Peter. Simon Anholt. Professor Simon Anholt is an independent policy adviser who works for governments and is a founder of the Nations Brands Index which tracks 20,000 people in 20 different countries - think about other countries. That’s going to be interesting. And also welcome back Xiaoling Zhang from the University of Nottingham.

Hans, if I could start with you. I mean, in debates about this kind of issue, the word ‘trust’ is often used. Now the research I’ve seen on trust reveals two slightly contrasting meanings. Some people believe that they like watching things, for instance like the BBC, because they believe that to be an impartial news service covering the world. And others like watching things because they regard it as the authentic voice of a government, and I guess to a certain extent CCTV may fit into that. Now, you’ve got EBU members who are both mostly, I would guess, public broadcasters, but frankly there are also some who are state broadcasters. So how do they fit into the trust pattern? And which of your members should the viewers trust, and which should they not trust?

HANS LAROES

Media consultant, EBU project on public service broadcasting:

This is exactly the reasons why we are changing things at EBU and trying to put some soft power on some of our members. Last year we came up with a declaration which everybody within EBU has to support and it’s about, for example, accountability, and independence - and so the basic idea is to build on trust. And I think one of the important things of a body as EBU is, is to help members to develop in the direction we think is good for building trust. And impartial journalism, excellent journalism, professional journalism without bringing the story of the government home is the way to do it. So things have to be changed in some of the member countries, but we are working on that. We are trying to help them. We are trying to put some soft pressure on, because we think that the only way to get… to build on trust is to be credible and to perform in an excellent way.

STEWART PURVIS

Professor of TV journalism at City University in London:

But the reality is that what other research shows is that, for instance, I’ve seen research when I was at Ofcom that said what are the most trusted and used services? And you get BBC, ITN, and then you get Google News. And you say: what is Google News? It’s just a load of other people’s news stuck together. So what they’re saying by trust is that they regard that as a useful guide; a trusted guide to take them to non-impartial sources, maybe. Isn’t that a bit of a challenge to your model?

HANS LAROES

Media consultant, EBU project on public service broadcasting:

It is… well, there’s a lot of challenges. Because one of the things is that these kind of organisations, these kind of companies, they have some sexiness, especially within new generations. And the way we all, perhaps, I don’t know, if it goes for all of us, perhaps we are a little bit old fashioned in defining trust or expecting our audiences to look at stories the same way we do. I think one of the big challenges is to translate this trust we want to establish in a different way - to use different language; also to find out different ways of engaging with audiences.

I think we all watch the websites, but we all watch the 10 O’Clock News at the BBC, and we watch the 8 o’clock news in the Netherlands. And we think that is the news that is bring presented; and that reflected what happened this day close by home and in the outside world. But there are a lot of other people who are confronted with news stories in a completely different way. Twitter is much more important for breaking news; breaking stories in other generations. So I think if an organisation like the BBC or the NOS, or other members of the EBU, want to build on trust, they have to do much more than only producing stories in the 10 o’clock news or on a website. They have also to find all kind of other ways to create stories together with the people in their audiences, and to connect in all kind of different ways.

So trust is not only about the stories you can trust. Trust is also about in what way does your organisation, do your individual journalists, connect with all kind of people in the audiences. And in which way are they open to create news together, to debate news, and to make news part of a dialogue and not the product in the end of the day at 10 o’clock.

STEWART PURVIS

Professor of TV journalism at City University in London:

Thank you, Simon. Could I turn to you as a brand and trust expert? So this issue about technology brands being more trusted than media brands, as I understand it goes beyond news - just more general trust. So what are media organisations to do in the sense that people like Apple are more trusted than say the New York Times? What can they do about it; what should they do about it?

SIMON ANHOLT

Independent policy adviser:

Well, it’s a real challenge, isn’t it. And I think part of the issue we’re looking at here is the fact that younger audiences are not quite as cut up about the whole issue of trust as we are. Trust matters to you when you’re a grown-up and when things matter. When you’re younger what matters far more is attraction, and dependably attractive is a variety of trust, but it’s not at all the same thing that we’re talking about. When I look at the way that my children access information on the internet, they’re not at all worried about whether it’s strictly accurate or whether it’s biased. Those kinds of concepts don’t seem to mean a great deal to them. What they’re interested in is how attractive it is. So part of the challenge, I think, for media organisations is to try to get their presence felt during that age where trust isn’t significant. So that when trust does become significant, because of changing circumstances or just age, they are at that age trusted brands.

STEWART PURVIS

Professor of TV journalism at City University in London:

And where does this leave national governments and their soft power policies?

SIMON ANHOLT

Independent policy adviser:

Struggling quite often. And I think one of the things that’s perfectly clear from looking at a lot of these international broadcasters is that frankly the governments behind them are very naïve about what actually works and what doesn’t. A lot of them seem to be following a 20th Century or a 19th Century propaganda model which in the globalised world simply doesn’t work. Propaganda only works when you control basically all of the information reaching your audience. And the wonderful thing about the modern world we live in today is that propaganda has become largely impossible because whatever method you push, no matter how much money you put behind it, you will be vigorously contradicted by a thousand other voices.

STEWART PURVIS

Professor of TV journalism at City University in London:

Xiaoling, I think what we’re hearing: everyone’s got to be more flexible. Everyone’s got to think of new ways of doing it. I mean, when we see the serried ranks of the Chinese Communist party lined up at the party conference, it doesn’t kind of look the most flexible arrangement we’ve ever seen, but I’m told it isn’t quite like that behind the scenes. I mean, what are your thoughts on whether the Chinese media in general but CCTV in particular can be flexible and innovative?

XIAOLING ZHANG

Head of contemporary Chinese studies, University of Nottingham:

Well, certain things - no, not really, not so far. But on many other things I think the space for autonomy, for creativity otherwise, is growing, while other certain things: everything has to be from the written script, like the order of peoples, the way they stand. That’s not possible. I think here we are going back, if I can digress a little bit, talking about the soft power - everybody is talking about soft power. I think we shouldn’t confuse the resource and the source of soft power because they are different. And what is the mission of soft power at the end of the day? Because some people do talk about looking at soft power from the international relations point of view - so actually it is all for the national interest. So here we are talking about being nice and being attractive, so it depends on which way you look at it. So BBC or CCTV can be the source of soft power, or can just be the resource for soft power, to project the soft power of the nation.

STEWART PURVIS

Professor of TV journalism at City University in London:

Peter, I left something hanging at the end of point one. Now Peter has pointed out to me he absolutely knew about this new target before it was announced, so that should be on his record. Maybe not everybody, but how could everybody know when it was such a grand target! So, given everything we’ve said, given the competition, given the change in licence fee, how are you going to make this number?

PETER HORROCKS

Director, BBC World Service:

Well, Tony did only announce it four weeks ago, so what I would say about it is that it’s about what it represents for the BBC. I think that’s the most significant thing rather than the number. We’ve got some ideas and I’ll mention some of the things that we’re changing and doing in this building which will help towards it. But I think for the people in this audience particularly, the BBC director general so demonstrably saying that the global role of the BBC is going to be crucial in the next few years - it’s going to be a crucial part of the argument about the BBC’s next charter. And that fits with an increasingly globalised world - the UK being affected by the world. Clearly digital is global, and therefore it’s absolutely imperative that both the World Service news and of course the BBC’s non-news content through BBC Worldwide is playing that role in projecting Britain’s values in the world. And that then creates benefit back to licence fee payers in terms of the interviews that we get; the content that’s created; the people who talk to BBC News and World Service. Because of the projection the BBC has around the world. And then of course the economic benefits that flow from that, which are significant - not just in the revenues that come into BBC Worldwide but the boost that that gives to British business. And there’s really clear evidence that we have in relation to that.

So that’s why Tony, I believe, is making this argument. How we do it is absolutely not resting on our laurels in terms of an 80-year heritage. But it’s absolutely about responding to the kinds of trends that we’ve been talking about. So, in the last few weeks in this room, we had a fantastic conference we called A Hundred Women. It was a conversation about women’s place in the world and it was strongly responded to by audiences. We launched a programme last week on World Service radio called BBC Trending - it’s also a Twitter feed; it’s a blog; it’s videos. It’s about understanding how social media stories are developing and investigating those. So it’s bringing the BBC’s journalism and its traditional qualities together with a world where stories develop in very different ways. And we absolutely have to be doing that modernisation. The World Service is not this sort of sepia-tinted short wave-only. It’s had to change very rapidly and it will do in the future.

STEWART PURVIS

Professor of TV journalism at City University in London:

Thank you, Peter. Daya, thank you for your patience. Two things. First of all, India. It was mentioned in the earlier session. Fascinating to think that there’s this country with an extraordinary number of television news channels - I’ve almost lost count of how many.

DARA THUSSU

Professor of international communication, University of Westminster:

200.

STEWART PURVIS

Professor of TV journalism at City University in London:

People kind of pouring this stuff in at you as well, and kind of you’re not really pushing much out. What’s the logic behind that? Is it not worth it? Are you the only people - has India got this right: that this isn’t a sensible use of money?

DARA THUSSU

Professor of international communication, University of Westminster:

It’s actually… it’s one of these ironies of history because in the 1950s and 60s India was a much broader country. The international profile was much more pronounced; government was much more keen on promoting India in a kind of… as a valued voice of the south and online movement and international forums. Today, when it is a purchasing power parody, the third-largest economy in the world, and media sector particularly is thriving - hundreds of channels, news channels - they’re not interested in international news.

I mean, I’ve just finished a book on India’s soft power. It’s the first book on the topic and, you know, among all the major networks, the missing one globally is… which is the second-largest terrestrial broadcaster in the world. And India has this amazing global presence in terms of the diaspora. It’s the largest English language diaspora in the world. It is a country with a tradition of pluralism. Media is much more open and I would say very sophisticated in terms of debate and discussion. But I think government is not interested and the private sector is trying to fill in. But then you know if you’re operating in a very complicated and crowded global marketplace you need state support.

STEWART PURVIS

Professor of TV journalism at City University in London:

Now let’s talk about what all this does to journalism. Because you’ve written some very interesting articles about this, or books, talking about news as entertainment - the rise of global entertainment. I mean, in the States at the weekend I saw an extraordinary example of this. Good Morning America, which is the ABC breakfast show which is a kind of partner of the BBC in America - it’s now the number-one breakfast show - and my wife said, well, actually said one of the rivals said this show’s on acid - by which I mean everything was incredibly short; everything was incredibly fast; lots of it was very funny.

The female anchors cut across the male anchors the whole time, which my wife applauded a number of times. But actually, interestingly, my wife is an academic and a psychologist - she actually rather enjoyed watching it. So it kind of confirms your theory, doesn’t it, that the way the media has got to develop - is it all going to get sort of cut up; is it going to be more celebrity driven? Doesn’t quite fit with some of the other things we’ve been talking about.

DAYA THUSSU

Professor of international communication, University of Westminster:

Because we are talking from a particular perspective; we’re talking from the broadcasters which are state-based, which have a long tradition, like BBC trust you mentioned earlier. You don’t round it over you know… long history, and that’s not just about the media organisation but also the culture from which it has emerged.

So CCTV, for example, will be, you know… it takes much longer for it to reach the level of professionalism and trust that BBC has, for example. But I think the bigger problem is if you open up to the market forces then I am not sure whether the BBC kind of journalism has much space. Also because of what was mentioned earlier about the internet and what that does to news. Today in fact on the way to this meeting I got an email from… Centre, which has sort of brought out a report which says that 8% of Americans are getting their news from Twitter and 30% from Facebook. And this generation is not really interested in television news, so maybe we’re having a discussion which was last century’s discussion in the 21st Century.

STEWART PURVIS

Professor of TV journalism at City University in London:

OK, that’s a very good point. Let’s consult the oracle, Professor Joe Nye, who’s up there above me somewhere. How does he think that new digital platforms and social media challenge the traditional media players?

VIDEO JOSEPH NYE:

Well, the media landscape has obviously become a jungle. There are just so many different ways of conveying messages in an information age. I mean, everything from a full-length feature on the BBC to a tweet and in between - you have an enormous number of blogs and independent journalists.

The long line between what’s a journalist and what’s an independent commentator has become blurred. So you no longer have the same degree of hierarchy in terms of establishing credibility that you once had. Nonetheless, it is interesting that when stories are contested - when there’s uncertainty about what the facts are - there is a tendency to go back to those organisations in the prestige press which is so often denigrated by the bloggers - that people want to know is that true or not true. There is a tendency go check the BBC website or the New York Times website or what have you, even though they will often be denigrated in terms of day-to-day comment.

STEWART PURVIS

Professor of TV journalism at City University in London:

So some reassurance there for the legacy media as they’re sometimes called. Now let’s open it up to you. There are, I think, a couple of hand mikes to go round. I welcome all your comments. Put your hand up please. If we get the mike to you, tell us who you are, where you come from. If you make a comment could you please say at the end of it, do you agree - just to turn it into a question. So let’s see. I can see a hand at the back there. If you’d like to ask the first question? Again, brevity would be much welcomed.

NIC NEWMAN

Nic Newman, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. It’s actually picking up on this digital point. I think Simon was mentioning the old 20th Century propaganda model and I was wondering, just sort of listening to this, whether we were just talking about the 20th Century media model. So a lot of what’s been talked about is television with digital and radio possibly as an add-on. So I guess my question is, you know, in the future, how much of Peter’s targets are going to come from digital rather than 24-hour television channels?

STEWART PURVIS

Professor of TV journalism at City University in London:

Peter, if you would answer that, and then Simon maybe offer a comment as well?

PETER HORROCKS

Director, BBC World Service:

Yeah, well, I think that’s a very good response to what I was saying, which is that the BBC doesn’t have BBC-style reporting. Actually, if you look at Twitter, which is the most news-oriented social media platform, the BBC is by far the most retweeted source in the world, and is twice our nearest competitor. And in terms of a sign of approbation or trust, or whatever you might want to call it, I would put that alongside the fact that we now have more than a quarter of a billion people who are reached in some shape or form. Because the decision to share a piece of news with a friend or more broadly is a really good sign of what social value the BBC has.

And that’s being driven by a different approach than we’re taking to our reporting style as well. I mean, you saw the marketing spot which… this campaign which we call Live the Story. We know that the values of impartiality are absolutely ones that we have to hold to. But the idea that that’s a kind of remote distant kind of London-knows-best-kind of broadcasting, absolutely - we’re moving very strongly away from. And I hope you may have seen and heard in the UK our World Service language service colleagues appearing on air increasingly and representing that sense of reporting from the locations where they live - as well as alongside, of course, you know, the great expat correspondents: the Jeremy Bowens and so on. So we’ve needed to update the style of our broadcasting as well as the technologies we’re using.

SIMON ANHOLT

Independent policy adviser:

The thing that has never changed and probably never will change is that in the end this is just down to the quality of the material that you produce. And if it’s good, and if it’s interesting, and it’s striking - of course we all squeak under the pressure to reduce the quantity of words that we use in order to do it, but that’s a challenge that was familiar to the ancients as well, who were writing their epigrams.

STEWART PURVIS

Professor of TV journalism at City University in London:

All the news that fits, isn’t it?

SIMON ANHOLT

Independent policy adviser:

Right. But the point is that the social media is a wonderful thing because it’s a vast echo chamber. If you’re able to put your finger on it - if you’re able to produce stuff that people find fascinating - then it will reproduce it to an enormous degree entirely free. And that’s a fantastic thing. But you have to maintain that level of quality and interest, and above all relevance, to somebody or other out there. And by that means you will gain sufficient trust for them to want to access the longer stuff when they get a bit older and a bit more boring like us.

STEWART PURVIS

Professor of TV journalism at City University in London:

To make sure we get as many comments from the floor, I won’t take everyone, but if anyone wants to chip in on these points…

HANS LAROES

Media consultant, EBU project on public service broadcasting:

Because we’re taking about Twitter and social networks also as a platform to bring stories. But I think one of the interesting things - it’s a media for dialogue, and one of the things I think that is needed for journalism to keep its trust is that journalists and journalistic organisations should open their black box of journalism and talk much more about the choices they make - the things they don’t do, the way they get stories in etc. And that’s one of the interesting things about Twitter, and especially Twitter, and also Facebook… is that as a journalist, as a journalist organisation, you are in a constant dialogue if you behave, if you understand the sign of the times with your audiences, with the people you work for. You get things in and you explain about your choices, and you explain why you don’t do things, because that’s also important for news organisations. So these new networks are not only there for producing or for bringing stories you produce in house to the audience. It’s there - they have to be completely two-way direction.

STEWART PURVIS

Professor of TV journalism at City University in London:

Next point, just down, Jeremy Greenstock, welcome.

JEREMY GREENSTOCK

Thank you. Jeremy Greenstock, former member of the British Foreign Office. I want to ask about the purpose of this soft power and whether the media outlets really should be showing more responsibility about how the world is ordered. What you’re describing is an open, flat world - a merry-go-round of new sources and the taking and giving of news - but for what purpose? The public sphere has to connect again with government or we don’t have an ordered world, and we’re in an era where the responsibility for an ordered world is not being paid back by the people who’ve gained freedom. And that applies to the media as well as the users of the media. What do the panel think should be the responsibilities of the media outlet to give something back to government that has lost its monopoly of power while it’s trying to order our world?

DAYA THUSSU

Professor of international communication, University of Westminster:

Thank you, thank you! That’s a very big question. I would only say that the world order itself is changing in some fundamental ways. So the way we have understood global news or, you know, whose story is more powerful, and whose narrative is to be seen as universal narrative… I think that is changing in profound ways. And I think what that entails is that a refiguring, especially in the West, especially in London and New York and Washington, to think about how do you accommodate these new voices? And, you know, they are also representing a particular position. They were always saying something which was different from what the West was saying. It was an alternative discourse but nobody was listening to them, because they didn’t have the power. And I think that’s the new change, the shift in power. And therefore what comes out of Beijing we are forced to listen to. And I think so governments haven’t gone away and governments are very much in control. And, you know, we talk about internet, for example. I mean, if you think about… you know the role the US government has played in expanding it and privatising it. And essentially you know for electronic commerce and how successfully it has done it. So governments haven’t, I mean… I’m of the firm opinion that governments are very much there and media are also - mainstream and elite media have a symbiotic relationship with the governments. And that goes for all governments, not just in China or Moscow.

ZAIRA HAF:

Zaira Haf. And I’m from City University. I just want to make a quick comment on John Owen’s contribution in relation to the difference between al-Jazeera Arabic editorial policy and al-Jazeera English. And just quickly to say, as a media scholar who studied the Arab media, it’s as if it looks like there is a schizophrenia between, you know, two channels that belong to the same network. So if you watch al-Jazeera Arabic it’s not just the soft power for Qatar. It’s the real power for Qatar. And it was put, you know, into sleep, this kind of usage for that power for a period of time, and then the Arab revolts came and then Qatar used that power at that time.

So when media scholars who studied the Arab world speak about al-Jazeera’s kind of influence in relation to how they covered the Arab revolts, we are referring in criticism of its coverage. We’re mainly referring to al-Jazeera Arabic because you don’t see that kind of, you know, change in the direction of coverage or the unprofessionalism in the way the Arab revolts were covered on al-Jazeera English.

And that brings a question to Peter Horrocks. Al-Jazeera Arabic now is losing lots of viewership in the Arab world. But as it happens it tends to be BBC Arabic is not gaining any of that and channels like RT, Russia Today is gaining more viewership that has been actually lost from al-Jazeera Arabic, and it’s not BBC Arabic - so why is that?

PETER HORROCKS

Director, BBC World Service:

I don’t think that’s quite right, actually. I mean, the biggest increase in the BBC audience that we reported this summer was in the BBC Arabic audience, which I think the television audience was up something like 40%. And that’s been a sustained increase over the last couple of years. So I think you’re definitely right about al-Jazeera Arabic having lost its credibility with its audiences, and they’re probably looking to a variety of places - but that absolutely includes BBC Arabic, which has had its biggest audience in the six or seven years or so that it’s been in existence in the last year.

STEWART PURVIS

Professor of TV journalism at City University in London:

Picking up on John’s invitation for people to perhaps pick up points that were made earlier and perhaps correct them or give us further information - next question?

MAJID KABASAN:

My name’s Majid Kabasan and at the moment I’m working independently. But I was former production manager on Press TV (Iranian TV network). That guy set it up here, the London company, but for Press TV. But at the moment I’m not working for Press TV. I don’t have any relationship with Press TV. My main concern is the optimistic view that I heard tonight about the number of viewers for BBC in future - not very long time future in fact. The reality is that if we look at the figures and also what we hear is that the number of viewers and people who listen to channels like BBC are reducing. And the reason is the panel that we saw tonight, many channels, new channels are coming here, using their space and domestic space for their broadcasting. That means that we are losing these viewers, and why we are losing the viewers? It is the matter of trust. As we discussed tonight, when it is lost, especially during the Iraq war, the viewers would like to hear from alternative news, alternative broadcasters. And as an example I can say when we started - the question is how can we say that we are getting half a billion viewers at the same time that we are losing the viewers at the moment and we are giving it to other newcomers and new channels?

STEWART PURVIS

Professor of TV journalism at City University in London:

Peter, again another challenge to that number of quarter of a billion, really.

PETER HORROCKS

Director, BBC World Service:

Audiences are definitely watching and consuming and listening to a wider variety of sources, and that’s a good thing. It’s good to have that competition. It’s just not factually the case that the BBC’s international audiences are going down. The 256 million that was referred to earlier is the highest ever audience that the BBC has had internationally. Getting to double that will be a huge challenge. There are things we’re doing in terms of sources of funding, working more effectively. Digital play a huge part in that but it is not the case that audiences around the world turned away from the BBC after the Iraq war. In fact our audiences have continued to grow through that period.

STEWART PURVIS

Professor of TV journalism at City University in London:

Press TV comes, of course, from Iran - not viewable on UK TV at the moment, on British platforms, because it fell out with Ofcom or Ofcom fell out with it.

SHAWAZ SADE:

My name is Shawaz Sade and if I do have a bias towards the BBC it’s because I’m a past governor. But I think I can still be objective about it. First of all, a comment about Indian soft, media soft power. I think they’ve won it because if broadcasting has cultural soft power they have really won that. Everywhere you go, even in the Middle East, in the Muslim countries, they watch Indian movies and you know the channels that give them pleasure.

STEWART PURVIS

Professor of TV journalism at City University in London:

So you’re saying India has won soft war of power without spending a penny of government money simply by re-showing material, domestic, to a wide audience?

SHAWAZ SADE:

Absolutely, culturally they have.

STEWART PURVIS

Professor of TV journalism at City University in London:

Don’t tell the National Audit Office I think is the answer to that.

SHAWAZ SADE:

However, if we come back to the real soft power, which is through news, don’t let anything interfere with the trust, because even the young people do understand they can discriminate between propaganda and real news and trust. So my advice to the BBC would be please keep up. In times of crisis it is the BBC they turn to, and the only problem with the television is the ordinary people, they cannot access it in developing countries, whereas they can access the radio. So please strengthen the radio broadcasting. Thank you.

STEWART PURVIS

Professor of TV journalism at City University in London:

I’m assuming the answer to all that is yes, and thank you. Just to save time, there’s a gentleman back there who’s been trying to get in.

NIGEL CHAPMAN:

Nigel Chapman. I used to be director of the World Service. Can I ask Dr Zhang about the wider Chinese strategy, because so far we’ve been discussing this soft power issue as a broadcasting matter but anybody going to Africa sees how far China is investing in Africa - how far it’s buying resources from Africa. This is not happening surely in isolation to China’s positioning in Africa as a whole - if you like ‘Brand China’. Would you like to comment on that?

XIAOLING ZHANG

Head of contemporary Chinese studies, University of Nottingham:

Thank you, that’s a very good question, because we’ve been talking about soft power but nobody has really defined what soft power is, and this is the question. We’re talking about soft power - it’s in contrast to, versus hard power and economic investment; all these things actually don’t lie in a nice definition. They don’t lie in the realm of soft power. It’s hard power. But to them many people have questioned that. They believe soft power, which is economic power, is actually part of the soft power, as Joseph Nye himself has called it, the smart power. So smart power is a kind of a combination between the two.

So let’s take Africa as an example. Of course the presence, the media engagement in Africa has increased tremendously dramatically. But also, like the Confucius Institute, it has increased a lot. And quite a few I think it’s around 29 or 30 Confucius Institutes are there. And they of course pave the way for a kind of platform as well for the projection of soft power. It’s the language and the culture. So, in terms of the media engagement, again, it is in many forms - like we were talking about aid, talking about direct aid or training programmes of journalists as well.

STEWART PURVIS

Professor of TV journalism at City University in London:

But I think you’ve also, as I understand it, and this is from evidence that Peter gave to the select committee, China has managed or is managing the transition to digital television in Africa. It’s managing the airwaves. So in a sense it fits, I think, with what Nigel is saying - that this isn’t just… it’s not about content. It’s almost about infrastructure as well.

XIAOLING ZHANG

Head of contemporary Chinese studies, University of Nottingham:

Infrastructure largely, yes.

STEWART PURVIS

Professor of TV journalism at City University in London:

Simon, this is good stuff for nation building to nation. What do you make of this?

SIMON ANHOLT

Independent policy adviser:

One of the interesting things that my research is beginning to show after nine or 10 years - just polling lots of people around the world, what they think about other countries and why - it’s beginning to be pretty clear that there’s a straight causality, a double causality. People trade more with countries that they admire more, and the countries that they admire more seem to be above all else the countries they think are good. So of all the drivers, of all the factors, and there are several behind which people might admire one country or another, the one that stands out by an enormous margin is the perception of morality. People like good countries. Now that’s entirely…

STEWART PURVIS

Professor of TV journalism at City University in London:

What is a good country? Is a good country somebody who gives you digital television?

SIMON ANHOLT

Independent policy adviser:

No, it’s not that. It’s entirely subjective and of course…

STEWART PURVIS

Professor of TV journalism at City University in London:

But I don’t mean in content terms. A country like China which invests in your country’s infrastructure - does that make them a good country?

SIMON ANHOLT

Independent policy adviser:

That makes them a good country. And generally speaking - and this is slightly picking up on Sir Jeremy Greenstock’s question a moment ago - it seems to have an awful lot to do with shared global challenges like climate change, human rights, terrorism, economic catastrophe and all the rest of it. The countries that people seem to admire most are the ones that appear to be doing most to tackle those issues, and that’s just quite reassuring, I find.

FLORIANA FASSAT

Centre for New Media in Society, New Economic School, Moscow:

My name is Floriana Fassat and I work for the Centre for New Media in Society at the New Economic School in Moscow. But I am based here in the UK, and I am very interested in what you are saying about smart power. Because what you say about China I think applies. This is a comment and a question; applies to Russia as well. Russia Today doesn’t have a particular interest in Africa, for instance, but it has, as you noted at the beginning, an interest in undermining the big power of the United States, and a lot of subjects are about the United States. And they’re doing it, as Daya was saying, with chipping away the image. So my question goes to Professor Anholt, and it’s about how Russia is perceived in your study that you’re undertaking.

STEWART PURVIS

Professor of TV journalism at City University in London:

The question is, is Russia a good country?

SIMON ANHOLT

Independent policy adviser:

Well, 20-second answer, if you - this is a horrible reduction but if you divide the world into the people who are broadly conservative and the people who are broadly liberal, the former vastly outnumber the latter and every time Russia or the Russian government does something a little bit conservative their rankings leap.

STEWART PURVIS

Professor of TV journalism at City University in London:

OK, that seems a good time to bring it to a close. We’re out of time - in fact slightly over time. Can I say on behalf of the hosts - that’s the BBC World Service, BBC College of Journalism and the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism - a thank you to all our speakers on this panel and our previous panels, and also to all of you who have asked questions. Thank you again for coming.

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