The committee of MPs operates separately from the government. Its report warned that the World Service is “at risk of losing its position as the most-trusted international broadcaster” because of a combination of funding difficulties and poor management by the BBC.<\/p>\n
Its budget declined by 21% between 2021\/22 and 2025\/6, mainly because of BBC cuts.<\/p>\n
Sir Geoffrey said: “Both government and the BBC should seriously think about how the World Service’s influence can be bolstered around the world, rather than risk its reach withering by degrees year on year.”<\/p>\n
The World Service is in danger of losing ground to rivals based in countries like Russia and China, which are spending billions on their global media outlets, he said.<\/p>\n
The BBC’s ability to plan for the World Service’s long-term future “is hampered by repeated short-term funding agreements from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office” (FCDO), the report said.<\/p>\n
That means the BBC is at risk of making decisions based on “short-term budgeting pressures” rather than “longer term value for money”, it said.<\/p>\n
The committee criticised the BBC, saying the broadcaster has failed to make a clear case for continued government funding.<\/p>\n
There have also been “weaknesses in BBC governance” of the service, and the BBC’s management of the World Service’s digital transformation had weaknesses that have contributed to a fall in digital audiences, the report said.<\/p>\n
The committee stressed that it “must both remember and praise all BBC staff working in countries in which they and their families may be at risk of imprisonment or worse”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The committee of MPs operates separately from the government. Its report warned that the World Service is “at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":472942,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-472941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=472941"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472941\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/472942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=472941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=472941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=472941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}