BBC’s South Asian staff on warpath

BY Prasun Sonwalkar| IN Media Practice | 21/05/2008

 Several journalists from South Asia working in the BBC World Service Monday staged  a unique floral protest against recent changes that they believe will affect the quality of journalism  produced  by the top 75-year-old broadcaster.

 Journalists from the Hindi, Tamil, Urdu, Tamil, Bengali, Nepali and Sinhala sections symbolically laid  flowers outside Bush House and placed a large banner  across its iron gates, with the words: ‘BBC World  Service 1932-2008?’

 The journalists, backed by the National Union of  Journalists (NUJ), have launched a campaign to protest  against off-shoring of programming to the Indian  sub-continent in what is described as a "money-saving  adventure" of the BBC management. The journalists alleged that BBC was compromising  its  standards and professional integrity by entering into  agreements with governments and subsidiary companies in the Indian sub-continent.

 Nearly 60 south Asian journalists gathered at the  event, which was addressed by Jeremy Dear, NUJ  General  secretary. The NUJ, he said, would turn the protest  into a national campaign across Britain.  Dear said: "We are committed to opposing these  off-shoring plans which are ill-founded and put at threat not just jobs but editorial quality,  integrity, and the future of the World Service.

 "You can dress up the changes any way you like - when stripped bare it means more work from fewer staff,  more work for less money and an apparent willingness  to undermine editorial integrity. This shows a  blatant  disregard of agreements with staff and unions.

 "The BBC¿s behaviour would cause a national scandal  if  its domestic staff were being treated this way."  Defending the plans to move staff to their countries  of origin in south Asia, the BBC said it had plans  to  have around 50 per cent of overall language service  staff located closer to their audiences.

 Mike Gardner, Head of Media Relations at the BBC World  Service, said that the BBC management was in  discussions with staff and unions about the changes.  He said: "The proposed redeployments of staff to  India, Pakistan and Nepal recognise the new media realities in those countries. It has been BBC World Service¿s policy for its language services to be  working closer to the audiences they serve for some  time".

 The off-shoring involves new contracts for the  London-based journalists who have been told to  accept redundancy or relocate to their countries of origin  in  south Asia, and accept downgraded pay conditions. Indian and other south Asian BBC journalists said that the redeployment would "dismantle a broadcasting service that is the envy of the world". They added  that it would affect their working and the lives of  their families.

 Dear said: "Today¿s protest showed the scale of the anger there is across the BBC at these cost-cutting plans. "We have shown we are committed to defending quality journalism, defending the world service and standing  up for justice in the face of the BBC¿s blatant  disregard for staff welfare and editorial integrity. Today is just the beginning of a major campaign  which  will expose BBC attempts to do journalism on the  cheap  and compromise the integrity of BBC journalism. BBC  staff deserve to be treated better".

 The BBC World Service began as the BBC Empire  Service  in 1932. It started its first South Asia division before India’s independence when the Hindi service  was  launched in May 1940. The Burmese service began in  September 1940. Other language services followed: Tamil service in  May 1941, Bengali in November 1941, Sinhala in March  1942, Urdu in April 1949 and the Nepali service in September 1969.