Media has power to ‘produce positive social change’ – BBC News chief

The media plays an essential role in holding to account organisations charged with delivering the Millennium Development Goals, a senior international news broadcaster has claimed.

Richard Sambrook, Director of the British Broadcasting Corporation’s global news division, speaking at a Commonwealth Secretariat debate on the role of the media in development last week, insisted that journalists and broadcasters, with the aid of evolving technologies, have the capacity to change ordinary lives for the better.

“When you are able to connect people across boundaries and across borders ... it can sometimes be incredibly powerful and produce positive social change,” Mr Sambrook said, recalling the story of a Pakistani rape victim who turned her life around and became an active women’s rights campaigner thanks to the helping hand of the BBC.

‘Authentic story’

“A woman called Mukhtar Mai told our audiences about a terrible experience she had had at the hands of her neighbours in a blog that was created on the BBC Urdu webpage,” he said, addressing a 50-strong audience at the Secretariat's headquarters in London, UK, on 14 October 2009. “This was a woman who had been raped in village in southern Punjab, but when the perpetrators were brought before their elders they were let off without punishment.

“So she told her story on the BBC and is now an active campaigner for women’s rights. But the extraordinary thing is she is illiterate - she dictated her blog to a BBC journalist who posted it up. Yet her authentic story has now driven an enormous interest and concern and motivated her and many others to change the circumstances of women in the area.”

The former Deputy Editor of the BBC’s UK Nine O'Clock News offered some insights into the editorial decisions faced by journalists, while sounding a cautionary note on why the BBC must remain impartial, admitting that “long-term processes” such as economic, political or social development often traditionally struggle to get news coverage.

CHOGM news coverage

“One of the things that is very difficult is ‘process’,” he said. “It is very difficult to get those long-term - particularly if they’re nation-building - processes framed in a way that the audiences will sit up and take notice. But it’s not impossible.”

He continued: “What is the hook? What is the reason to talk about it today? What is the impact on people’s lives? Why should people in busy, overcrowded lives flooded with information take note?”

Emphasising the rise of new media technologies such as mobile phones which play FM radio, he added that the BBC was investing “quite heavily” in covering the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Trinidad and Tobago next month.

“We will get quite a lot of coverage because of the outcomes, the discussions, the kind of thinking that goes on there is potentially going to lead to different calculations in the future which we believe that the audience needs to be aware of,” he said.

Millennium Development Goals

But Mr Sambrook, who sits on the board of the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association, insisted that, however noble, the BBC could not actively “promote” activities such as the Millennium Development Goals.

“We can’t campaign,” he explained. “Protecting our trust and protecting our credibility is incredibly important for us – whether it’s the Millennium Development Goals or anything else ... We are publicly funded and are trying to be neutral.

“The Millennium Development Goals - very few people would argue that any of them are bad or wrong or shouldn’t be delivered - but it is very difficult for us to get on board or campaign because people say: ‘Well if you’re campaigning for that what’s the politics behind the goals, which are the countries that are most going to benefit?’ So we have to be careful.

“However, I do think that by reporting on them, discussing them, debating them, holding people to account for their declared targets, and so on, we can assist in the process, keep them in mind, and hold people to account in delivering them.”

Independence and impartiality

Echoing the defence of publicly funded news mounted by Mark Scott, Managing Director of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, at a major Commonwealth Broadcasting Association lecture last month, Mr Sambrook defended the editorial independence of the BBC.

“The argument that says that the only guarantee of independence is profit we certainly don’t sign up to,” Mr Sambrook said.

“Rather the opposite, we believe that a very large part of our independence is constitutional because we are paid for by the British public. We are editorially independent. But the [British] Foreign Office has no say and has never tried to have any influence on our content.”

Related Websites:

• BBC World Service