Around the Commonwealth: Promoting free and fair broadcasting

The Commonwealth Broadcasting Association (CBA) has been a stalwart defender of free and fair public service broadcasting on the airwaves for more than 60 years.

“It is by no means perfect around the Commonwealth,” says Elizabeth Smith, Secretary-General of the CBA since 1994 and a former controller of English programmes for the BBC World Service, “but I think it would be a lot less perfect if we didn’t exist.”

The organisation, set up after an inaugural conference of Second World War broadcasting institutions in February 1945, today boasts more than 100 broadcasters from Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, Australasia, the Pacific, North and South America among its membership.

Just last week the organisation admitted Ghanaian commercial broadcaster Skyy TV to its ranks.

“There are a lot of areas where coverage is not free and fair and where the skills of the broadcasters are not very good. This is what we have been working on over the years,” says Ms Smith.

“We do this through the exchange of information, with our website and through conferences, doing training and consultancies, and organising awards bursaries - all to try to encourage quality.”

Tales from the Commonwealth

Together with the aid of the Commonwealth Secretariat, the CBA produces each month a podcast packed full of entertaining and informative interviews, which is picked up and broadcast by local radio stations around the Commonwealth. Editions titled ‘Tales from the Commonwealth’ have been broadcast by the BBC World Service in each of the last two years.

This month’s June Podcast covers the Indian parliamentary elections, the efforts of Commonwealth members to drive up exports amid a global recession and the winners of this year’s Commonwealth Writers' Prize.

Robin White, a veteran broadcaster from the BBC World Service’s Africa section, has produced and delivered the podcast since it was set up in January 2006. Working from his own home studio in south London, Mr White travels as much as possible to Commonwealth countries to report first-hand on events around the globe.

“What I most like doing is travelling to countries and making special half-hour programmes with a local journalist,” Mr White explains.

“I made a progamme about Guyana with a blind journalist, Julie Lewis, which was really great. It was about the problems of being blind in Guyana and also being a blind journalist. Marching in the street, we had to avoid falling in potholes, and covered the problems of travelling on transport, that sort of thing.”

“You find out how resourceful blind people are in general, and this journalist in particular – everyone in the country knew her and respected her. She was able to achieve huge amounts.”

Mr White, who is also involved with an online CBA training programme to help equip journalists with broadcast skills, says he is keen to include more content produced by local stations on the podcast.

“I’d like to involve other stations around the Commonwealth much more, so they would provide material for the programme. That way everybody would learn from each other.

“My role would be to process contributions and put them all together in a programme. That is something I’d really like to get going.”

Related Websites:

• Commonwealth Broadcasting Association