Rosaleen Hughes: “What today really brought out was how valuable the product of monitoring is, both for people in government and for BBC journalists.”
Ian Hargreaves: “I found when I was running a bit of BBC News that I wanted journalists to make the maximum use of it. It was a way of knowing what was going on in faraway places that was very special to the BBC.”
Phil Harding: “Certainly in my time at the World Service, BBC Monitoring was a fantastic journalistic resource. It was a fantastic tip-off service and it brought you real insight into countries from difficult parts of the world and parts of the world that you couldn't normally have a BBC correspondent in.”
Sir David Omand: “And I think if you want a really effective BBC World Service, and this is a crown jewel as far as the United Kingdom is concerned, it's got to have this supply of understanding provided to it, so those running the service can then tune what they're putting out. The essence of good policy when you're looking at defence and external affairs is really understanding what the situation is that you are potentially going to get involved in.”
Janet Gunn: “I was a research analyst belonging to [inaudible] in the Foreign Office and we processed information about the countries we were following and analysed them and fed this into the policy making departments. And BBC monitoring material was probably our most vital input into this.”
Baroness Pauline Neville-Jones: “You got a certain amount of enlightenment and assessment and appreciation so that you could yourself then distinguish really between what in the end you could regard as propaganda and where there was real significance.”
Alban Webb: “Until fairly recently, it has been sort of inculcated into members of staff at the BBC and elsewhere what the value of monitoring is. That is not necessarily the case anymore, and so monitoring has to tell its story and educate the BBC and its customers about its value and about its product.”
Baroness Pauline Neville-Jones: “I think it's a bad idea to hide BBC monitoring, should come out into the open as a valued asset and promote it and it should be demonstrable how it enriches BBC journalism as well as what it can do for government and potentially for other for other clients.”
Chris Westcott: “When I arrived, monitoring was organisationally part of BBC World Service and was funded in a particular way which saw a range of funding coming from different government departments and then between about 2005 till 2010 and we were much more a standalone division in the BBC, funded directly by the Cabinet Office and then with the Comprehensive Spending Review in 2010, which came into effect in sort of 2011, 2012, we became funded by the BBC licence fees.”
Ian Hargreaves: “We heard uh very, very vividly in the first part of the discussion today the problems that arise by the monitoring operation being funded by the licence fee in exactly the same way as BBC World Service Now is, which in my opinion and in the opinion of many, has actually worked quite well for the World Service. Exactly how that's working for monitoring is more complicated because they are not only producing work for the BBC, they're producing work for, for parts of the government and for other clients.”
Alban Webb: “And to the question of, ‘well, I can get it on the internet, can't I?’ What is it that monitoring adds that gives it value in the digital world?”
Baroness Pauline Neville-Jones: “It was always true in the sense that you could get it off his Izvestia, you know, but could you get it in a timely way? Could you get it in a manner in which you understood it? Could you get it alongside other things which were relevant to it? You can make the case very cogently, in my view. You know, for the for the quality product which has characteristics and value, which the chap who sits on his computer and sort of tries to trawl through the material available, is unlikely to achieve and a busy person can't, and it's a busy person who needs to know.”
Janet Gunn: “I think today's discussions highlighted how much the changes in information transmission needs to be kept on top of by government and other analysts.”
Phil Harding: “You just think of the role that social media played in the Arab Spring, at least in catalysing the protests in, in so many countries, to be able to monitor those and report on those developments is absolutely crucial. Just look at the role that Islamic State, so-called Islamic State, is now making use of social media and blogs and, and videos and so on and so forth. Oh yes, this is a vital part of their work and very much part of the modern world.”
Chris Westcott: “BBC monitoring started in 1939 monitoring Nazi shortwave radio broadcasts and for most of its history up until the 1980s, was effectively looking at newspapers and listening to radio stations. But at the moment you move into the age of the internet, and you start to think about the Internet not just as a media, and to retransmit existing content, whether it be radio, newspapers or TV, but as a as a medium in its own right, particularly through the rise of social media, that has been a particular change for BBC monitoring, essentially moving from what you might think of as a one to many world of communications where you're broadcasting literally through to a many to many world of lots and lots in some cases millions of individual conversations. And how do you try and make sense of that world in a way which still gives values to the customers who need to understand the world and what it's saying to itself. So, BBC monitoring is still listening to radio stations, it's still watching TV stations and it's still looking at newspapers. But it's also expected, often with less resources, to then be able to apply all of those skills, techniques and technologies to a whole range of new sources, some of which we know about and some yet to be invented.”
Baroness Pauline Neville-Jones: “People have no doubt about it and can wax quite lyrical about the historic past and how important BBC Monitoring was to our capacity to deal with a single vector, but very serious enemy, you know, the Soviet Union and the case was clear. It's a more confusing case now but what I would say is what this morning's discussion brought out is that after a dip in which we didn't appear to have much ideological challenge, we didn't appear to be vulnerable to many threats; it’s back. It's more confusing, it's more difficult, there are different kinds of ideological challenge, but they're there and they're there to our well-being and indeed, in certain respects actively to our national security and safety, it is back as a subject of public interest and a public concern, and should be, you know, an important part of therefore of public policy. So, I would say BBC monitoring is right back as I think I said right at the outset, it's not an asset that we should allow to be fritted away through lack of care and unwillingness to fund.”
10 June 2015
The University of Westminster hosted the second research workshop, one of five organised as part of the AHRC BBC Monitoring Collection Research Network, which brought together senior figures from both the BBC and Government to discuss the significant role that the BBC Monitoring Service has historically played in foreign affairs. Discussion focused on how the problems and issues faced by BBC Monitoring helped to shape it as an institution, and identified specific areas of its history for further research.
