Examination of Witnesses (Questions 120-139)
MR NIGEL
CHAPMAN AND
MS ALISON
WOODHAMS
9 NOVEMBER 2005
Q120 Mr Horam: As of today, you do not
have responsibility for any television as such?
Mr Chapman: That is correct.
Q121 Mr Horam: It would be useful if
we could have a note about the BBC's television services by comparison.
For example, you said you thought it had 60 million viewership?
Mr Chapman: I know for a fact
that is what the recorded viewership of BBC World is.
Mr Horam: By comparison, for example,
with CNN and Sky News, that would be very useful. Obviously we
cannot talk to you about them, but that would be very useful.
Q122 Chairman: You are going to move
into an Arabic television service, which is going to be funded
through grant-in-aid?
Mr Chapman: Yes.
Q123 Chairman: I think in your memo you
refer to a possible Persian television service?
Mr Chapman: That is correct.
Q124 Chairman: How much would it cost?
Mr Chapman: We have not costed
it yet. In the memo there is a mixture of a hard-costed proposal,
which is going to become fact, if you like, as a result of the
30 million investment plan I talked about earlier on, and then
aspirations, gleams in the eye, which need to be part of the discussions
with Government in the 2007 spending round, and Persian television
is in the latter category, not the former.
Q125 Chairman: Presumably, given recent
events in Iran, you would hope that the Foreign Office would look
favourably upon this?
Mr Chapman: Looking not so much
in the context of British foreign policy but as a broadcaster,
if we believe that it is really important that people have access
to free and independent media in societies, then, looking at it
objectively, the position of Iran at the moment, you make out
a very strong case for Britain improving what it can offer in
that regard. You also then have to look at the role of radio and
new media, and, as I explained earlier on, one of the difficulties
about Iran is that the access the BBC can get, both in news-gathering
terms but also in terms of transmitting its radio properly to
Iran, is extremely difficult. The notion that I can get an FM
transmitter for the BBC Persian service into Iran is a non-starter
at the moment. One of the ways you would be able to reach into
that society would be through satellite television, because many
people in Iran, increasing numbers, have access to satellite television.
It would be one of the ways of making sure they were able to access
the BBC's material and services. That is the broadcasting logic.
I must stress this. The proposals I put forward for 2010 are based
on a broadcasting logic. People try and paint them as a foreign
policy initiative. I am a broadcaster. I understand broadcasting.
I know what we need to do to have impact in markets. I know what
the mix should be between television, radio and new media. That
is where I come from. Therefore, when I decide to close a service
or open a new one that is the logic on which I am basing the argument,
if you like, because I know how people consume and use information
in modern times.
Q126 Chairman: But such a service could
not happen at least for two or three years in any case.
Mr Chapman: No, it would not.
It would have to be funded by new funds during a spending review
outcome. There is a limit to how far the World Service can go
in reprioritising its existing budget in order to meet new ambitious
challenges which it has to face if it is going to be effective.
I think we have come a long way. The 2010 proposals are a 20%
reprioritisation of the budget to cover both the investment plan
of £30 million and also rising costs over this two to three
year period. For any organisation that is a challenge, that is
a tough call. We can do it, but I cannot keep on doing it. I cannot
keep on doing 20%, 20%, 20%. You will end up then with no services
left over, and that would not be appropriate.
Q127 Mr Horam: One of the original reasons,
as I understand it, why the first attempt to establish an Arabic
service failed was that it was in partnership.
Mr Chapman: That is right, with
Orbit, the Saudi based distributor, between 1994 and 1996.
Q128 Mr Horam: You would not go down
that route again?
Mr Chapman: No. The Arabic television
service is a publicly funded free-to-air service. The operation
the BBC ran between 1994 and 1996 was a commercial partnership
backed with Saudi funds via the Orbit company. A very different
set of circumstances. I think we learned some lessons from what
happened between 1994 and 1996 (the questions many of your colleagues
were driving at earlier on) which was about editorial independence
and making sure we could cover the sort of stories you want us
to cover.
Q129 Mr Horam: That was a serious problem?
Mr Chapman: It was a very serious
problem. The reason why the short-lived Arabic television experiment
died in 1996 was because of a disagreement about the coverage
of Saudi Arabia, and, as a result of that, the Orbit company decided
to no longer fund the production/distribution costs of this service.
The BBC had no alternative then but to close it. We have all learned
lessons from history. One of the lessons I think we have all learned
is that that is not an appropriate way to fund an Arabic television
service for anybody, but particularly not the BBC, and therefore
the way you do fund it is through public money. You distribute
using a range of satellite services where you pay for your carriage
and people have free-to-air access to it if they have a satellite
dish, and then you start with the right building blocks to maintain
a service over a long period of time; and that is the very fundamental
difference between what happened between 1994 and 1996.
Q130 Mr Horam: That does, of course,
constrain your expansion. You failed in 1996?
Mr Chapman: We did not fail in
one sense in 1996. We actually had quite a significant audience
arising from the services in 1994 to 1996. We failed in 1994 to
1996, if you want to call it failure, because we defended our
editorial principles and values. I think that was the right thing
to do, and I think if we had carried on with a television service
whereby we put out programmes which were not true to the BBC's
editorial values, we would have failed in the long-term because
people would not have trusted it.
Q131 Mr Horam: You can only maintain
your editorial principles through grant-in-aid. Is that what you
are saying?
Mr Chapman: Yes, that is my view,
because we have looked at alternatives, we have thought about
whether we could have done a commercially funded Arabic television
service, but we came to the conclusion that was not an appropriate
way to go, for the reasons you are alluding to, which is that
if you want editorial independence, if you want the sorts of stories
that we feel we ought to do without fear or favour, if you have
commercial partners you cannot do that because they then threaten
you with pulling the plug on your funds and say that is not what
you want us to cover, and that then undermines the whole basis
of your operation.
Chairman: I think none of us would want
a BBC television service that was like the Fox News.
Q132 Andrew Mackinlay: Can I come back,
Chairman, because I am still not comfortable with the reply you
gave me earlier. It seems to me that whereas, quite rightly, our
domestic services are covered by the Charter and independence
and so on, there is a different relationship when it comes to
tax-payers' money running this proposed organisation. I have some
attraction for this, but it does seem to me that very early on
you are going to run up against a situation where you have two
legitimate but conflicting positions: one is the journalists,
the editorial independents, who say, "We must report this",
and that action being not consistent with the interests of the
United Kingdom politically, and so the relationship is different.
This is where it is the United Kingdom politically providing the
funds for this service, and it seems to me you are going to immediately
run into conflict inevitably, but one can see both positions.
You do pump out what your journalists say because they are professionals
and professionals of that region. They say, "This is news.
This is what we should, from the point of view of our professional
journalism and transparency, push out." The Foreign Office
says, or the British tax-payer says, "What the devil. Am
I paying for this?"
Mr Chapman: Mr Mackinlay, all
I can say about that is that the World Service has managed to
ride that particular tide.
Q133 Andrew Mackinlay: Yes, but for television.
Mr Chapman: Yes, but this service
falls under the broadcasting agreement that the World Service
has with the Foreign Office, and in the first few paragraphs of
that it is absolutely clear that the editorial independence of
the output is treasured and guaranteed. This service falls fairly
and squarely within that and, therefore, it will have to subscribe
to our relationship with the Foreign Office in exactly the same
way as the radio services do now. There is no different set of
relationships here. That is why I have confidence that the Foreign
Office, our funders, will respect that editorial independence,
as they have done in relation to radio for many years, and new
media as well.
Q134 Sir John Stanley: Can I come to
Nepal. I have a non-pecuniary interest as Chairman of the Nepal
Parliamentary Group. First of all, can I thank you very much for
your letter, which will be circulated to all members of the Committee,
clarifying the exchange I had with Sir Michael Jay, when he came
before the Committee, as to the extent to which the Nepali language
services were not being cut in Nepal.
Mr Chapman: That is right.
Q135 Sir John Stanley: Since then you
probably will have seen the written answer which I had from Dr
Howells on 31 October, which is in front of the Committee now.
I am sure you would agree that Nepal, perhaps above almost all
countries in the world at the moment, is vitally in need of independent
access to news, given the huge extent of Maoist control over a
large part of the country and given, in the non-Maoist areas,
the action that has been taken by the king and his government
since 1 February this year to jam, most regrettably, a number
of Nepali language services, and we now have the new media ordinance,
which has just been promulgated. The question I would like to
put to you is this. Is the Committee correct in assuming that
all the cuts so far in Nepali language news services in Nepal
are attributable to actions by the government and that there have
been no actions by the BBC World Service to reduce their output?
Mr Chapman: Absolutely correct.
Q136 Sir John Stanley: Can I ask you
almost the reciprocal question: given the huge needs in Nepal,
is there anything further that you can do to increase access to
BBC World Service news in Nepali in particular but also possibly
also in the English language in that country?
Mr Chapman: We did mount some
extra programmes earlier this year when all the FM distribution
in Nepali was curtailed by the king. We put forward extra short
wave programmes in the morning to supplement those which we put
out normally in the evening which are carried by the FM transmitters
in Kathmandu and other parts of the country. We then stopped doing
them because the situation eased and we got back to the status
quo, if you like, whereby our partners in Nepal were able to carry
the traditional durations, if you like: the evening programmes
of our Nepali service. The Nepali service is a very small service.
It has four people. It is a tiny service. It works extremely hard
and effectively and I would pay tribute to them; I think they
have done a fantastic job. The last thing on my mind is to cut
them back—if anything, I want to strengthen them—and
I am watching the situation very closely. If the situation turns
to one where no FM rebroadcasting is possible of a Nepali service,
either by Nepal radio or by our partners in other parts of the
country, I will look very hard at reinstigating the extra programme
that we put on earlier this year. It is a flexing position, we
need to be variable about it, but the changes in the 2010 proposals
are nothing to do with the Nepali service. The Nepali service—I
absolutely take your central tenet—is a very important service
for the people of Nepal in a society which is deprived of free
and independent information, it is close to my heart and I am
going to make sure it remains a strong service.
Q137 Sir John Stanley: Could you tell
us what assessment you have made as to the impact on the BBC World
Service both in the English language and in the Nepali language
of the Government's media ordinance that was promulgated last
month?
Mr Chapman: It is hard to provide
precise figures about that. I take some comfort from the fact
that something like 700,000 of the 800,000 audience for Nepali
came through short wave, so that short wave was not interrupted
by the ordinance, but I suspect that there was a growing audience
coming through the FM distribution which has been strangled, if
you like, because people cannot hear those programmes on FM at
the moment. We have made representations about this. The English
output is audible for the main in Kathmandu on FM, although there
are times when bulletins are interrupted because there are certain
items, particularly, I suspect, reporting on Nepal, that the authorities
do not like people to listen to. The Nepali service, unfortunately,
is not as widely available on FM as I would like it to be at the
moment. It is available on some stations, but not on others. We
carry on the fight to make sure that it is audible, and I very
much hope that our partners will win their battle to make sure
the BBC World Service can be heard on FM right across the country.
Sir John Stanley: If you have any further
information you want to give to the Committee as to the impacts
of the media ordinance on the incidence of jamming that is continuing
to take place, we would be grateful to have a note on it.[3]
Q138 Mr Mackay: Mr Chapman, clearly you
have got a very serious responsibility to protect your staff wherever
they are stationed. Nevertheless, it was obviously deeply disappointing
and regrettable that, due to harassment (and worse) of staff in
Tashkent, you have had to suspend your operation in Uzbekistan.
I wonder if you could tell us a little bit more about what happened
and also give us an indication of when you might hope to resume
service in Tashkent?
Mr Chapman: We continue to provide
services in Uzbek to the people of Uzbekistan through short wave,
and medium wave distribution, so if you are a listener there,
you are getting a basic service from us still, but, obviously,
the degree to which we can report events inside that country is
severely restricted at the moment. I could not have confidence,
in the light of conversations going on at the moment, that the
situation is going to get much better quickly. The BBC has a correspondent
from London based in Tashkent at the moment on a temporary visa,
and he is going about his business and reporting events there,
but that is not a long-term relationship necessarily. It could
be, but it may not be, depending on the authority's attitude.
They may decide that they do not want him to stay or they do not
want to give a replacement visa to somebody else, and then, of
course, we would have nobody there reporting for the English output.
In terms of the Uzbek staff, there were in the region of 12-15
Uzbek staff at various times based in the country. As a result
of the harassment, which is exactly the right word, and the intimidation
they have suffered for their reporting, we are in the position
now where there will be effectively no Uzbek staff based there
who can report for the BBC. They will either have to leave for
their own safety, or they have resigned, or whatever. They just
do not feel able to carry on, and they are having to keep an extremely
low profile at the moment. Some of the things that have been said
about the way our staff have behaved are a disgrace, in my view.
The notion that we sent staff into Uzbekistan to ferment discord,
or, that we had some prior knowledge of the events that were going
to take place in other parts of the country when the protests
took place against the government is nonsense. They were people
based there going about their legitimate business. They were training
staff. The reason there were slightly more people there than normal
is that they were training and recruiting staff, and the authorities
have added two and two and made 16, and the 16 is that they were
there to ferment discord and report matters unfairly. What the
state prosecutor said about the BBC Uzbek service is completely
untrue and extremely unfair, and it is very damaging in the sense
that it is personally damaging to both the people who came from
London to report on events there and have had to come home, and,
more importantly, the Uzbek staff who are based there, whom I
have a great deal of concern for their own personal safety; and
one of the reasons why we cannot carry on with them doing that
reporting is because it exposes them to attack, harassment and
intimidation which would not be a fair thing to ask them to do.
However much I believe in the principles of freedom of journalism,
there come a point where you cannot allow people to be in that
position, and, despite having raised it with the President—I
have raised it with the ambassador here in written correspondence—the
answer I get back is that there is not a problem with this. Well,
I am sorry, there is a very serious problem with this and it has
meant that we are unable to carry out the extent of reporting
that I would like to see the World Service do in Uzbekistan.
Q139 Mr Mackay: That was an extremely
helpful response, and I hope it goes without saying that this
Committee is hugely sympathetic to your plight in Uzbekistan and
I think we would appreciate, if it was possible, you keeping us
informed of developments in writing. Meanwhile, as this increasingly
vile regime continues, a regime of which many of us have a great
deal of concern, I would be interested finally to hear from you
what pressure the Foreign Office and ministers and the Foreign
Secretary are putting on their opposite numbers in Tashkent to
ensure that matters are righted as quickly as possible?
Mr Chapman: I would have to offer
you a note on that, because while they are clearly aware of the
position, I am not precisely aware of how many meetings they have
had with whom about it in recent times, but I am confident they
share our concern about it, and the matter has been raised by
the BBC and by other people. The difficulty I have is that the
authorities there do not really recognise it as an issue.
Mr Mackay: I think we feel that the relationship
between our government and the vile regime in Tashkent is not
entirely satisfactory, and I do not mean to draw you on that and
you do not need to comment, but, in that context, it is very important
that we do have a note on that, as you have just promised, so
that we can put further pressure on ministers to act in your interests
in Tashkent. Thank you.
3 Please refer to the supplementary note provided
by the BBC World Service, Ev 72 Back
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