#mediaforgood

The BBC's home affairs editor Mark Easton took to Twitter earlier to announce:

BBC Media Action funding

 

Charlie on the Open Thread notes the BBC's own chart showing the funding for its charity arm Media Action. The latest figures on its summary page are for 2017-18. It's very interesting who funds BBC Media Action:

 

Counting down from most to least, the funding comes from:

Other grant income - £6.6m

Donations from individuals and companies incl. gifts in kind - £5.7m

Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) - £5.5m

Department for International Development (DFID) - £3.8m

European Commission - £2.7m

Gates Foundation - £2.2m

UNICEF - £1.6m

Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency - £1.3m

UN Development Programme - £1.3m

British Council - £1m

USAID - £0.9m

BMB Mott Macdonald - £0.8m

UN Population Found - £0.8m

Global Affairs Canada - £0.7m

US State Department - £0.5m

It's intriguing that £12.3m comes in under 'Others'.

There's a later, more detailed breakdown on Media Action's 2018-19 annual report - which, if I read it correctly, suggests some shifts in funding from one year to the next and gives some account of those 'Others' (click to enlarge):

  

The smoking gun

The row over EU funding for the BBC rolls on.

This week's European Scrutiny Committee questioning of the BBC's Tony Hall, James Harding and David Jordan contained several mentions of the BBC's Media Action unit, such as this from the BBC's head of editorial policy and standards (Mr Jordan):

The BBC, as a public service broadcaster, does not take money from the EU. The organisation to which you were referring that takes money from the EU is an organisation called Media Action, and that is an independent part of the BBC, with independent trustees, whose job is to do something very different from broadcasting to the UK. The job of Media Action—it is engaged in a number of current projects funded through the EU—is, for example, in Afghanistan, to work with the Afghan media sector to develop its news and other programme-making skills, including the adoption of public service broadcasting values. In Bangladesh, it is to work on disaster preparedness. In Syria, it is to build on the achievements of an FCO-funded socially responsible media platforms programme, which has successfully established a web-based training facility for journalists and bloggers. In Iraq, it is to help to contribute to the development of an open media environment through improving legal and regulatory freedoms, and then it has a project on governance, which is about holding decision makers and media leaders to account in Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, the Palestinian Territories, Syria and Tunisia. You would probably agree that those sorts of projects are desperately needed in those countries. That is very separate from making programmes for the BBC.

Today's Sunday Telegraph, however, claims that the BBC's Media Action isn't just a democracy-spreading, pro-media freedom charity working in the Arab World and South Asia, uninfluenced by its EU funding (and, therefore, also uninfluenced by the EU's contractual demands on those who receive funding from it that it won't say or do anything to harm the interests of the EU). 

The Telegraph makes the explosive-sounding charge that BBC Media Action was "paid to deliver key parts of the EU’s political strategy in countries on the fringes of Europe":

BBC Media Action received £9.3million between 2011 and 2014, much of it to deliver the EU’s “European Neighbourhood Policy”. European Union officials have described this as “a broad political strategy” designed to strengthen the “prosperity, stability and security of Europe’s neighbourhood in order to avoid any dividing lines between the enlarged EU and its direct neighbours”. 

As part of this work, BBC Media Action led the consortium of media companies that delivered a three-year project called Media Neighbourhood, which provided training for hundreds of journalists in 17 countries on the outskirts of Europe.

Reporters taking part in the scheme attended “study tours to the EU in Brussels” during which they were able to interview “top EU policy makers” in the European Commission and the European Parliament. 

I have to say that I still found that puzzling. The article is a bit too vague and lacks a smoking gun.

The second paragraph there sounds as if Media Neighbourhood is merely the application of the unit's usual democracy-spreading media action, just as David Jordan was saying - albeit in countries closer to the EU than Mr Jordan was suggesting. Is it really seeking to enhance the EU's cause too, as the Telegraph alleges?

Checking out the BBC's Media Neighbourhood website, those countries are: Algeria, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Egypt, Georgia, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Moldova, Morocco, Palestine (sic), The Russian Federation, Syria, Tunisia and Ukraine. 

It is interesting that David Jordan's list to MPs - which appears from his description to relate to this specific project - only consisted of "Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, the Palestinian Territories, Syria and Tunisia". He omitted to mention Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, The Russian Federation and Ukraine. Wonder why he did that? 

The BBC Media Action/EU joint project has two stated aims, according to its website. The first is the one that David Jordan was happy to acknowledge to parliament:

To strengthen the professional capacity of journalists across the ENPI region, particularly in the areas of media independence and online media.

The second, however, is something he most definitely did not mention:

To enable the public in the ENPI countries to have a more informed and objective understanding of EU social, economic and political issues and cooperation with the ENPI beneficiary countries.

So, yes, the BBC Media Action project does have an explicit role in promoting the EU's cause, doesn't it? 

It's not just about helping journalists (public broadcasters, bloggers, etc) in various countries after all, apparently. It's also about "enabling the public" in those countries "to have a more informed and objective understanding" of the EU and their countries' relationship with the EU...

...a form of words I can't say inspires me with confidence about its impartiality.

Now - unless I'm missing something - that really does seem like a smoking gun. 

What on earth is this BBC-owned project doing helping the EU to influence public opinion towards the EU in 17 countries close to the EU's borders - especially in those that used to belong to the Soviet empire (like Ukraine)? 

Maybe a few letters to MPs on the European Scrutiny Committee are needed, asking them to try to get to the bottom of this. (Rona Fairhead is due to appear before them soon. Maybe they could ask her.)

Fact of the day

Apropos of, well, I'm not quite sure...

Did you know that the BBC is presently working on improving maternal health in Uttar Pradesh, India? 

I learned that from a recent tweet from Today editor Jamie Angus, who's just been in Delhi meeting colleagues at BBC Media Action who are working on the project. 

Sara Chamberlain, Head of Information Communication Technology for BBC Media Action in India, put it this way late last year:

I’m exhausted, on the verge of illness and we’re very, very tired in the India office – but – we’re EXCITED! 

Why? Because in the last month, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare in India has delivered maternal and child health content developed by BBC Media Action to more than 260,000 families. 

Kilkari, BBC Media Action’s mobile messaging service for pregnant women and mothers, is being piloted on a huge scale in the Hindi-speaking belt as part of a national scale up by the Indian government. 

The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, in close collaboration with BBC Media Action and with the support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is scaling three of BBC Media Action’s maternal and child health mobile services nationally.

Isn't it astonishing what the BBC gets involved in, unbeknownst to most of its licence fee payers? 

(Not that any of this seems to come out of the licence fee. The majority of BBC Media Action's funding comes from the government - i.e. the British tax payer).

And while you're taking that fact on board, here's another from Jamie Angus:

BBC Media Action: Transforming lives through media around the world

Does it surprise you that the BBC received 6,744,151 euros in funding from the European Union last year? (h/t Alan at Biased BBC)

The information comes from the European Commission's own website - an easily checkable database. Just search for 'BBC' and up pop the results.

So which BBC projects did the EU fund last year?

4,975,000 euros went to Med Media: towards media sector reform in the Southern Mediterranean.

1,125,987 euros went to Consolidating Media Freedom in Iraq.

643,164.16 euros went to Shaping the future of Syria's Media by promoting independent voices and fostering constructive debate.

[The countries in "the Southern Mediterranean" are listed as "Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Pal".]

The BBC Media Action unit is the specific body being funded by the European Commission here. 

It's a registered charity (Charity number 1076235) and a limited company (Company number 3521587). Much of its funding comes from the UK government (via our taxes), though you will also note that the U.S. State department, the U.N. and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation give considerable amounts too. 

BBC EU Action

The Telegraph v the BBC. Round 116. 

And it's the Telegraph's Tim Ross again piling on the punches. [I've never heard or seen him on the BBC, as far as I'm aware, and am probably even less likely to see him from now on!]

This story relates to the charity BBC Media Action and the news that it received £4.5 million from the European Union last year "mostly for work designed to ensure the progress of the enlargement of the EU".  

Some Conservative MPs are concerned, saying this could "undermine the credibility of the BBC’s coverage of controversial European issues, including EU enlargement," and have called for the charity to sever its ties with the BBC. 

Though legally a separate entity, the BBC classes it a part of its global news division, and the BBC's most senior global news manager, Peter Horrocks, chairs the charity.

The article quotes the BBC's defence...

A BBC said any suggestion that coverage of EU issues could be influenced by the charity’s funding arrangements was “completely unfounded and confused”.

“BBC Media Action is an independent charity which works to support free and fair journalism and reduce poverty around the world,” the spokesman said.

“The BBC’s editorial remit is to deliver fair, balanced and impartial coverage and we are satisfied that our coverage of the European Union does just that.”

 ......but undermines it by quoting Peter Horrocks himself, stressing how close the two organisations are:

“The juxtaposition of being an independent charity but also part of the BBC is an important and powerful one,” he said. “The charity has deep roots in the BBC and shares heritage and values but it also works in a distinctly different way to other parts of the BBC… It isn’t standing back and reporting — BBC Media Action gets involved.”

 The article also notes that the BBC also gets funding from other significant world players:

BBC Media Action also received significant funding from the Department for International Development, the US State Department and the United Nations.