About the BBC Feed

Let's unleash the BBC's potential to combat fake news and help Global Britain

2020-07-23T10:23:09+00:00

By acting now, we can ensure fair and free news - along with Britain's voice and values - continue to resonate powerfully around the world

The past few months have proved just how priceless are the values of traditional journalism in the ‘fake news’ age. Two forces in particular have brought this home in no uncertain terms.

First, the massive “infodemic” of online misinformation that has grown up alongside the coronavirus crisis. The problem is so severe that, even if a safe and effective vaccine is found, global health leaders warn that the drowning out of reliable, authoritative guidance could dramatically hinder take up.

Second, the growing use of disinformation as a tool for democratic disruption. This week’s report into Russia’s activity in the UK has laid the stakes bare. For the state-backed actors of Russia and China, the provision of news is first and foremost an extension of state influence.

The warning bells ring loud and clear. Last year, Russia’s RT was fined for serious and repeated breaches of our impartiality rules. Earlier this month, we learned that China’s English-language news network, CGTN, could be banned from the UK for similar breaches.

For the BBC, the result has been audiences flocking to us in their millions in search of trusted news and information. And not just at home, but right around the world.

Today, we are releasing new figures which show that our audience has soared to a record 468 million people outside the UK every week. Whatever your views on the BBC, it’s a reminder that we are without question one of Britain’s strongest and best-known brands, synonymous with quality and accuracy worldwide. Our international news services rank first for trust and reliability. Our World Service remains a beacon of democratic values and a lifeline for millions living in fear, captivity or uncertainty.

This is not simply Britain’s gift to the world. Independent research shows that there is an exceptionally high correlation between places where people are aware of the BBC and places where people think positively about the UK. More than that, the BBC helps UK trade.

This has perhaps never been more important. The UK will forge a new relationship with the world in the decade ahead, built on an ambitious vision of ‘Global Britain’. Success will mean drawing on all our considerable international assets, and that means unleashing the full global potential of the BBC.

The Government has long recognised the BBC’s vital role in helping to enhance Britain’s reputation and influence around the world. This is why, four years ago, it agreed to make its largest-ever increase in investment in the World Service.

That funding of £86 million a year has allowed us to complete the World Service’s biggest expansion since the Second World War. We now operate in 42 languages from Korean to Punjabi to Pidgin. We have opened new and expanded bureaux in locations from Delhi to Bangkok to Belgrade.

The result is that we have been able to step up the fight against fake news worldwide and support democracy on the front line. That’s meant journalists on the ground during elections in countries like Nigeria and India, calling out fictions and fact-checking disputed issues in real time. It’s meant world-class investigative journalism from teams like Africa Eye, created to hold power to account across the African continent.

In Khartoum, it was Africa Eye’s investigation into last year’s massacre of peaceful protestors, based on painstaking analysis of more than 300 pieces of mobile phone footage, that revealed it was possibly ordered by Sudan’s military rulers. In Baghdad, it was a BBC Arabic investigation that exposed Shia clerics advising men in how to abuse young girls. In Kashmir, we were able to respond to an India-imposed media blackout by extending our short wave radio services in three languages.

None of this would have happened without BBC teams on the ground. And by working with partner organisations and local independent journalists to promote the highest journalistic standards, our teams also play a vital role in helping to train journalists around the world and turn the tide on fake news.

It doesn’t stop there. Just this month we announced that the Trusted News Initiative – an international partnership of major news and tech organisations, convened and led by the BBC – will focus on fighting disinformation during the US election. This in a country where a recent Reuters Institute study found BBC News to be more trusted than all major US news providers.

All this takes place against the backdrop of a growing battle for global influence, in which news provision has emerged as the key weapon. The first years of this new decade will decide which competing vision of the future of news will triumph: the fake, or the fair and free.

This is a race that the UK is well-placed to win. The BBC is its priceless asset; the pre-eminent provider to the world of facts you can trust. What we have achieved with our additional investment has proved how far we can extend the reach of Britain’s democratic influence and amplify our global voice. It has also shown how much further we can go.

When I became BBC Director General in 2013, I set the challenge of doubling our global audience to reach 500 million people by our centenary in 2022. We are more than on track to achieve that goal. Now I have announced a redoubling of our ambition. The BBC has plans in place to reach a global audience of one billion people by the end of the decade.

We are consulting closely with Government on how further investment could realise those plans and help strengthen Britain’s democratic influence worldwide. We need to seize this moment. Get it right and we have a chance to send out a clear signal about the UK’s place in the world at a crucial time. By acting now, we can help ensure that Britain’s voice and values will continue to resonate powerfully around the globe in the next decade and beyond.

This article originally appeared in The Daily Telegraph

Beyond Fake News: why the World Service is putting a spotlight on distortion and manipulation

2018-11-01T11:00:00+00:00

What is fake news? What’s real? What’s distortion? Should we use the term fake news at all?

These were the questions we grappled with putting together the Beyond Fake News season. The term is being weaponised, becoming contentious and even toxic. Being the BBC, we have a definition: false information deliberately and intentionally published and shared - for profit or political gain.

Not everyone uses the term with precision. Some politicians use it as a term of abuse to discredit stories they don’t like. President Trump famously used it to attack critical stories; other world leaders followed suit.

Many respected researchers and journalists prefer the terms distorted news, or misleading information. But despite all its limitations, fake news is a term widely used and understood, especially in regions we’re targeting this November – India and Africa.

It’s the right time to put a spotlight on this dark corner of the internet. When technology creates fake videos, so-called deep fake, when a comedian accurately impersonates President Obama using voice manipulation; when fake stories travel faster than true ones on Twitter and where news feeds create filter bubbles – we at the World Service have to be more proactive in the battle for truth and accuracy.

The Beyond Fake News season is telling stories from across the globe, including India, where the sharing of fake news about child abductions on WhatsApp led to mob murders; Brazil, where bots have been hijacking discourse across the political spectrum; and Africa, where online warriors are attempting to manipulate democratic processes.

You can see many stories on the Fake News landing page here.

This new season fights the challenges posed by fake news, instead of just reporting them. It is crucially important to understand why people share unverified information knowing that it may be untrue.

On 12 November we will publish audience research from India and Africa investigating these motivations.

We are holding major conferences across India and in Nairobi, bringing together key players in news, social media, technology, politics, and education, to seek solutions to the problem of fake news being shared, particularly on encrypted platforms.

The audience research results will provide a framework for young IT experts to participate in solution-seeking hackathons in Nairobi and Delhi, looking at how we can prevent people sharing fake information.

To underpin this we’re sharing BBC videos and workshops that give practical help in recognising what’s fake and what’s real.

I was one of the BBC staff mentors who delivered these workshops to British children. Our teams in Delhi and Nairobi felt it important that their audiences had access to similar materials. The media and political environment in their countries is much more challenging for young people with recent access to the internet and smart phones, with much less regulation and in much more chaotic, partial and noisy media markets than the UK.

We sent materials developed in London to colleagues in Delhi, Nairobi and Sao Paulo who sought ways of re-versioning them for their audiences. You can see a film made originally for British schoolchildren here.

Beyond Fake News is an important start, but can only succeed by working with other likeminded organisations, local partners, tech giants and our audiences.

The BBC Reality Check team will deliver daily verification and fact checking during the Indian elections next year. We are training media partners in Nigeria to ensure they can use verification techniques and hold politicians to account during elections in February.

The BBC Monitoring service has a long history in investigating propaganda and fake stories, going back to the Second World War. With new disinformation investigators, they add to BBC journalism expertise, recognising when stories are fake, checking sources of stories, pictures, videos and text.

But the main thing the BBC can contribute to this battle is a commitment, as a global broadcaster, to honest, independent, accurate and impartial journalism.

Tackling fake news all the year round and internationally: BBC School Report expands

2018-09-26T10:00:00+00:00

BBC School Report is expanding to help young people spot fake news in India

More than 2,000 young people have learned journalistic skills and how to spot fake news this summer, as part of BBC School Report roadshows.

The media literacy skills initiative has toured the country recently, including at the Bournemouth Air Festival; Clacton Airshow; Godiva Festival in Coventry; at BBC offices in Salford and London, and in the coming weeks will be at BBC Digital Cities in Birmingham, and in the North East during October.

School Report at this year's Countryfile Live event in August, at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire

Since starting in 2006 BBC School Report has supported teachers in more than 2,000 secondary schools to help 11- to 16-year-olds develop new literacy skills and critical thinking.

We’ve now expanded to include young people aged up to 18, as well as youth organisations so that those in harder to reach areas can also take part.

This means BBC School Report can operate all the year round because while schools finish for the summer, youth organisations don’t, so we’ve lots of events running throughout the holidays.

Although research has shown that young people are aware of the concept of fake news, a majority of children both in the UK and overseas struggle to recognise it.

There’s been some great feedback from young people saying they’ll now able to tell what’s real and what isn’t when they go online, which is one of the biggest things we can teach them.

It’s a real moment for them when the penny drops, and they ask why people would put out false information in the first place.

You could teach it as ‘this is an example of fake news, and this is an example of real news’, but we felt that was quite a simplistic and not very exciting way to approach it.

When we broke down what you needed to know when it comes to identifying fake news, it’s actually the principles of good journalism.

School Report Q&A with Gurvinder Gill of Newsbeat

That’s what we’ve used to guide our workshops, and to be the framework of iReporter, the online game we have made with Aardman Studios that places you in the heart of a newsroom amidst a breaking news story.

It’s been played more than 83,000 times so far, and makes you think about motivations, source checking, why people might say certain things, how data can be confusing, balance and different viewpoints – what journalists face every single day.

The game measures you on speed, accuracy and impact, so if you go really fast through it you’d score low, because accuracy is of crucial importance.

As well as events, films, lesson plans for teachers and online tools, more than 100 BBC staff members have been trained as mentors to go into schools and help young people distinguish fake news from the real thing.

Going global with BBC School Report is the next step, as we know that fake news can be more of an issue abroad than in the UK. There will be further events in Nairobi and in Delhi during the autumn, and we are also in talks about Europe.

Find out more at the BBC School Report homepage here.